2021 External Sector Report: Divergent Recoveries and Global Imbalances
Source details
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- 2021 External Sector Report: Divergent Recoveries and Global Imbalances
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Bibliographic details
- Published: August 2, 2021
Key Highlights
- Overall current account deficits and surpluses widened in 2020 to 3.2 percent of world GDP.
- The IMF’s multilateral approach suggests that global excessive imbalances were broadly unchanged in 2020 at about 1.2 percent of world GDP.
- The external outlook for 2021 is highly uncertain given the divergent economic prospects across countries.
- Unprecedented government borrowing to finance health care and economic support has had uneven effects on current account balances.
- The impact on the current account balances depends on a country’s relative fiscal policy stance compared with that of its trading partners.
- The outlook for global current account balances is a gradual narrowing during 2022–26, mainly reflecting a narrowing of the US deficit and China’s surplus to below pre-pandemic levels.
- Over the medium term, collective action is needed to reduce global imbalances in a growth-friendly manner.
External Positions and Policies (Overview chapter)
- Presents the evolution and outlook for and risks stemming from global external positions.
- Summarizes the 2020 external assessments for a globally representative set of economies.
- Details of individual assessments are in Chapter 3, “2020 Individual Economy Assessments.”
Fiscal Policy and External Adjustment
- Fiscal support in response to the COVID-19 crisis has been unprecedented.
- The chapter analyzes how such support has affected external positions at the individual country and global level.
- The chapter examines the expected effects of the withdrawal of fiscal support over the medium term.
2020 Individual Economy Assessments
- Individual economy assessments use a wide range of methods to form an integrated and multilaterally consistent view of economies’ external sector positions.
- Results are detailed in Chapter 3, “2020 Individual Economy Assessments.”
Report Components and Access Points
- External Sector Report: Divergent Recoveries and Global Imbalances — August 2021.
- Full Report, Executive Summary, Blog, Workshop: December 2021.
- Chapter materials include chapter 1 data, online annexes, chapter 2 data, online annex, and chapter 3 assessments.
Source: 2021 External Sector Report: Divergent Recoveries and Global Imbalances — IMF web landing page (https://www.imf.org/en/publications/esr/issues/2021/08/02/2021-external-sector-report).
Content in this bundle
- Microsoft Word - Workshop Program - Divergent Recoveries and Global Imbalances .docx
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- 2021 External Sector Report — Chapter 1
- ESR 2021 — Chapter 2 dataset overview
- Executive Summary
- Online Annex 2.1
- Onlineannexes11
- Full Report