IMF downgrades Albania’s growth projections, pessimism about public debt

The International Monetary Fund is the latest of a series of important international institutions that has revised downward the Albanian economy.

In the recent report on the regional perspective of Europe, published on Monday, the IMF has significantly reduced its projections for Albania’s economic growth for both next year and 2019, while for the current year the projections remain unchanged at 3.7% increase.

For the next year, however, the projections have been cut to 3.7%, from 4.1% estimated in the previous report, that of April.

Meanwhile, for 2019, IMF speaks for a 3.8% growth, a depreciation of 0.3 percentage points from the projections.

In negative territory have been revised not only the projections of economic growth, but also those for debt, investment or domestic demand.

In almost all macroeconomic indicators, the International Monetary Fund is more pessimistic than 6 months ago, something that has generated a general depreciation of the performance of the Albanian economy in the upcoming two years.

One of the most worrying indicators remains undeniably that of the public debt, where the IMF states that the decline will not be as high as it was thought six months ago.

In April, it was projected that this year the debt would fall to 68.6%, while the new report projects it at 70.8%, ie above the 70% target.

For the next two years meanwhile, debt projections have been revised in decline by almost 4 percentage points each year.

The only macroeconomic indicator positively revised by the IMF is that of the unemployment rate, where the dose of optimism has increased slightly compared to April this year.

SCAN

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