The World Bank warned today of the risk of a “decade of missed opportunities” for the global economy, as growth over the past five years was the lowest on record in 30 years, according to its World Economic Outlook report.

The Washington-based international financial institution expects the global economy to grow 2.4 percent this year, down for a third year in a row after reaching 2.6 percent last year, according to data released.

It is 0.75 percentage points below the average seen since the early 2000s.

With the exception of 2020 and the severe recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the shutdown of much of the global economy, it is reported that this is the lowest global growth that has been recorded in a year since the 2008 financial crisis.

Of course, as the report underlines, “the global economy is in a better position than it could be and has avoided a global recession mainly because of the stability of the US economy”.

However, the resurgence of geopolitical tensions in the short term and the outlook in most emerging economies in the medium term raise fears that “the 2020s become a decade of lost opportunities’ estimated World Bank Chief Economist Intermit Gill, according to the announcement.

Growth will therefore be unevenly distributed across regions, at just 1.2% for advanced economies, a year-on-year decline of less than 4% for emerging economies that are seeing investment, both private and public, slow .

The world’s second largest economy, China is expected to go from 5.2% in 2023 to 4.5% this yearslowing further to 4.3% in 2025.

In this case “a strong reduction in household consumption and spending,” Gill said during a telephone press conference, but mostly its long-term challenges such as “an aging population, debt that reduces investment, fewer opportunities for improving productivity’.

Beyond the difficulties for the global economy, the Bank underlines that post-covid recovery has been very uneven across countries: although advanced economies have returned, most among them, to levels equivalent to or higher than pre-pandemic levels, this has not been the case for many developing or emerging economies.

“At the end of 2024, we estimate that all developed countries will have GDP per capita higher than before the pandemic. This ratio is 2/3 for emerging economies and less for developing countries. For the most vulnerable or war-torn countries, this is less than half,” Gill pointed out.

And without an acceleration in global growth in the coming years, “one in four developing countries will be poorer at the end of the 2020s than they were before the pandemic,” Gill argued.