The World Bank has cut its forecast for global growth, warning that the world economy remained overly reliant on the “single engine” of the US recovery.
The Bank said it expected lower oil prices to provide a boost to global activity. But it warned several headwinds would mitigate the effect of the falling cost of crude. These include weak confidence among consumers and businesses and the inability of big central banks to cut interest rates below their record-low levels to boost inflation expectations.
“The global economy is running on a single engine,” said Kaushik Basu, chief economist at the World Bank. “It is only the US economy that is forging ahead in a global economy with so much uncertainty. We need several engines,” he added.