The world economic climate has worsened in the fourth quarter this calendar year, as indicated by increasingly negative expectations from economic experts, according to the World Economic Survey (WES), reports UNB.
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the Munich-based Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) published the report on Wednesday.
In Asia, the economic climate indicator has fallen further and is now below its long-term average and expectations for the next six months continued to worsen in the region, the report says.
The poll asked 1,119 economic experts from business and academic institutions to assess current and expected economic developments in their 119 countries this past October. Their answers were analyzed to reach a quarterly figure representative of the current economic climate.
Views on the world economic climate fell from a second quarter high of 107.7 points to 78.7 in the fourth quarter, marking the lowest point in the past two years.
The falling figures reflect the waning optimism of expert expectations for the future, recording consecutive drops from 110.5 in the first quarter to 71.9 in the fourth.
Expert assessment of the overall current economic situation fell from a second quarter high of 108.4 to a year low of 86.0. “These results demonstrate the fragile state of the financial sector, particularly in public finance, and underscore the threat that the still relatively strong real economies of many countries could slide into recession,” said ICC secretary general Jean-Guy Carrier.
“However, it is not too late to avoid this destructive scenario if politicians worldwide, and particularly in the euro area, succeed in convincing markets that the right decisions are being made to keep the financial sector under control,” he said. In North America, the economic climate further deteriorated, with the current economic situation increasingly assessed as unfavorable. The expectations in the region for the next six months were less confident than in the third quarter but remained in positive territory, the report indicates.
And in Western Europe, a significantly more negative outlook was also brought on by a worsening economic climate.
The inflation estimate for all of 2011 remains at 4.0% on a global average, and the majority of WES experts expect unchanged interest rates over the course of the next six months.