China, the fastest growing major economy, would slow to 7.5 per cent, even after taking into account the effects of a planned huge fiscal stimulus, while India's growth would decline to 5.8 per cent. Excluding these two giants, the developing world would grow only 2.9 per cent next year.
These forecasts assume that the dramatic policy interventions to shore up the global financial system and support growth in the industrialised world bear fruit – and the bank admits the risks in that picture are to the downside.
Unlike the industrialised world, emerging and low income countries as a whole would not see their economies contract outright next year, the bank predicted.