Global growth remains sluggish

Despite a temporary pick-up in world production at the start of the year, growth will continue to moderate amid a further deterioration in economic sentiment and elevated levels of uncertainty. We expect the global economy to expand at a rate of 3.2 percent this year, reflecting a downward revision by 0.1 percentage points compared to our March forecast. For 2020, we continue to see world production growing by 3.3 percent. At this pace of growth capacity utilization in advanced economies will decline, albeit from high levels, and since inflation will remain moderate, further monetary policy tightening has become unlikely. Instead, we expect central banks to adopt a looser stance in 2020. Economic policy uncertainty will likely remain high over the forecasting horizon. In particular, a further escalation of the trade conflict between the United States and China as well as its potential extension to the trade relationship with the European Union constitute significant downside risks to our outlook.