Moody's predicts this year's G20 economic growth at just over 3%

The Dollar Business Bureau

The Moody’s Investors Service predicted the G20 economic growth at over 3% for this year and the next. It also warned of challenges like US protectionism, China’s deleveraging measures and geopolitical risks.

The agency said strong data in the first half of the year prompted it to raise the 2017 growth forecasts of China to 6.8%, South Korea to 2.8%, Japan to 1.5%.

It also expects the euro zone to increase in the rest of the year, as suggested by the robust indicators and therefore forecast positively for France, Italy and Germany. Its forecast for United States however was reduced to 2.2% for 2017, 2.3% for 2018, from its earlier prediction of 2.4 and 2.5% mentioning the superpower’s weaker-than-expected first half performance and a modest fiscal stimulus than what was assumed earlier.

“The balance of risks is more favourable than it was at the beginning of the year,” Moody’s said. “However, we note event risks related to conflicts in the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea, and the Middle East.”

While its prediction about India was cautious in May it said that the ‘economic growth will accelerate to 7.5% in the current fiscal and the reforms by the government will help achieve 8% GDP growth rate in about 4 years’.

"We expect marginally faster growth in India. According to our forecast the economy will grow 7.5 percent in fiscal year 2017 (2017-18) and 7.7 percent in fiscal year 2018 (2018-19)," it said.