Ukraine War Fueling Global Economic Downturn As Growth Projections Slide

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the “main contributing factor” to the potentially devastating one per cent drop in projected global economic growth this year, UN development economists UNCTAD said on Thursday, in the body’s latest global economic update.

“The main headline is a downgrading of the projection for global growth this year,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, Director, UNCTAD Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, speaking in Geneva.

“We anticipated back in September of last year that the global economy would grow by around 3.6 per cent. We expect it to grow by 2.6 per cent this year and of course, the main contributing factor to that, is the war in Ukraine.”