The director general of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) emphasized yesterday Monday that the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the attacks of the Houthi rebels off the coast of Yemen, which particularly affect the Suez Canal, constitute threats to the global economy .

The war in the Gaza Strip has already dealt a blow to the economy of the Middle East and North Africa region, Kristalina Georgieva explained during an event in Dubai.

“I fear above all that the conflict will drag on, because the longer it goes on, the greater the risk of contagion,” the head of the Washington financial institution said at an annual event that brings together business figures and politicians in the United Arab Emirates. and continues until tomorrow Wednesday.

“Right now we see a risk of spillover in the Suez Canal,” an area of ​​key importance for world trade, Ms. Georgieva continued, referring to Houthi rebels’ attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in a show of “solidarity” with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In late January, a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (CNUCED in French, UNCTAD in English) warned that the volume of world trade passing through the Suez Canal had fallen by more than 40% in the previous two months .

If the hostilities expand, “this can become even more problematic for the world as a whole,” Ms. Georgieva noted.

“Challenges”

On October 7, members of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas launched a raid from the Gaza Strip against southern sectors of the Israeli territory, killing more than 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official announcements by the Israeli authorities.

In retaliation, Israel’s military launched large-scale military operations in the Palestinian enclave that have so far killed more than 28,300 people, the vast majority of them women and children, according to the latest casualty count released by Hamas’ health ministry. .

Concerns that there is a threat of regional escalation between Israel and its main ally, the USA, on the one hand, and Iran and armed organizations close to it and supporting Hamas, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, on the other , they don’t stop intensifying.

“I expect that by the middle of the year interest rates will move in the direction that inflation has been moving in the last year,” the IMF director said when asked about interest rate cuts in major economies.

The president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, for his part, emphasized that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip”, as well as “in Ukraine (…) and in the Red Sea” raise the main “challenges” for the prospects of the world economy..

If you “add these variables to what was probably already the lowest growth rate in 35 to 40 years (…) it’s something we have to watch closely,” added the head of Washington’s second financial institution.