The economy will slow more than expected this year: The IMF has downgraded its FY 2023-24 growth outlook for Egypt to 3.6% from its previous 4.1% forecast in July in its World Economic Outlook (pdf) released yesterday. This is the second time it has lowered its outlook this year, cutting it to 4.1% from 5.0% in July, citing the shortage of foreign currency and dwindling investor confidence.

Lower growth seems to be the consensus: Pundits left and right have been lowering their expectations of how our economy will grow in FY 2023-24 and 2024, citing (let’s all sing it together) the FX crunch, record inflation, and high interest rates. Among them: the World Bank and Morgan Stanley presented more pessimistic forecasts for FY 2023-24, while the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development downgraded its 2024 outlook.

Growth to slow in FY 2022-23, but not as much as we thought: The Fund revised upwards its estimate for FY 2022-23 to 4.2% from 3.7% previously. The economy grew at a 6.7% clip the year before.

What we know: The government has released official growth figures for the first three quarters of FY 2022-23, during which growth slowed to 4.0% from 7.8% in the same period a year earlier.The government has not yet released official figures for the final quarter.

The inflation outlook: Consumer price growth is expected to average 32.2% this year, up from 23.5% in FY 2022-23, slightly ahead of its forecast in July.The annual urban rate of inflation rose to 38% y-o-y last month, according to state statistics agency Capmas’s most recent report (pdf).

THE REGIONAL OUTLOOK-

MENA outlook slashed again: The IMF lowered its 2023 MENA growth outlook by 0.5percentage points, and now expects regional growth to slow to 2.0% from 5.6% in 2022. Growth estimates for 2024 were revised upwards to 3.4% from 3.2% in July.

As was Saudi’s growth forecast: The IMF now sees Saudi Arabia’s GDP to fall to 0.8% in 2023 and 4.0% in 2024 (down from from 8.7% in 2022), citing “announced production cuts, including unilateral cuts and those in line with an agreement through OPEC+.”

THE GLOBAL OUTLOOK-

IMF holds global growth outlook: The IMF left its 2023 forecast for global growth unchanged at 3.0%, below 2022’s 3.5% rate. The lender trimmed its outlook for next year by 0.1 percentage points to 2.9%. “Part of the slowdown is the result of the tighter monetary policy necessary to bring inflation down. This is starting to bite, but the transmission is uneven across countries,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas wrote in the foreword.

Inflation is cooling off: The Fund is now forecasting global headline inflation to fall to 5.9% this year from 9.2% last year, marking a 0.9 percentage-point drop from July’s forecast. The fund now expects global inflation to continue to slow to 4.8% in 2024, down from the 5.2% projected in July.

Correction: 11 October 2023

A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed the Egypt figures to the 2023 and 2024 calendar years, instead of the FY 2022-23 and FY 2023-24 fiscal years.

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