2 weeks Ago By Chester Robards Senior Business Reporter [email protected]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has improved its 2025 growth outlook for The Bahamas from 1.7 percent to 1.8 percent, and has revised its global growth outlook from 3.
3 percent to 2.8 percent this year, as the United States’ trade policy creates ripple effects across world economies. Minister of Economic Affairs Michael Halkitis released a statement praising The Bahamas’ growth outlook despite the shrinking global economy.
“Similarly, the projected real growth rate [for The Bahamas] improved from 1.6 percent to 1.7 percent for 2026,” Halkitis said.
“When we combine this improvement in the growth projections with the recent positive outlook issued by Moody’s, along with the inaugural credit rating by Fitch Ratings, this underscores the resilience of our economy. “The IMF emphasized the impact of uncertainty and unpredictability of the recent global tariff policies to its outlook; which drove the downward revision to global growth relative to the January 2025 WEO [World Economic Outlook] update. “Despite the downside risks that drove this downward revision of global growth, including trade tensions, financial market adjustments, and global inflation which is expected to decrease at a slower rate, The Bahamas was able to maintain and improve its growth outlook.
” The IMF’s World Economic Outlook report said while global growth in 2024 was underwhelming, it was stable. The body, which initially saw growth in the books for 2025, now contends US policy has led to “a major negative shock to growth”. “The unpredictability with which these measures have been unfolding also has a negative impact on economic activity and the outlook, and at the same time, makes it more difficult than usual to make assumptions that would constitute a basis for an internally consistent and timely set of projections,” the IMF report said.
“Given the complexity and fluidity of the current moment, this report presents a ‘reference forecast’ based on information available as of April 4, 2025 (including the April 2 tariffs and initial responses), in lieu of the usual baseline. “This is complemented with a range of global growth forecasts, primarily under different trade policy assumptions. “The swift escalation of trade tensions and extremely high levels of policy uncertainty are expected to have a significant impact on global economic activity.
” The IMF said it expects growth in the US to slow to 1.8 percent, which is 0.9 percentage points lower than the projection made in January 2025.
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