Warning over collapse in capital flows

Edmund Conway
Telegraph
January 28, 2009

The Institute of International Finance, the global organisation of major banks, predicted an almost unprecedented collapse in world economic growth and capital flows.

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It became the first major global institution to forecast a full-scale global contraction in 2009, predicting that the economy would shrink by 1.1pc.

IIF chief economist Philip Suttle said: “This is the worst period since the interwar years. The global growth backdrop is very difficult. We foresee a contraction in 2009 in the global economy of over 1pc.”

He also expects rich economies to contract by 2.1pc – the worst peacetime output since the 1930s.

Private flows of capital into the emerging world are set nearly to dry up in the next year, the IIF predicted, dropping from $928.6bn in 2007 down to $465.8bn in 2008 and then to $165.3bn the following year.

As a result the current account deficits in emerging Europe will more than treble in the coming year, from $30bn in 2008 to $117bn next year.

The forecasts shed light on the likelihood that the current financial crisis transmutes into a severe worldwide recession of the kind that has not been seen since the Second World War. Asia is likely to suffer a worse downturn than during the Asian financial crisis, the report indicated.

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