[News Today] IMF cuts Korea’s growth outlook to 0.8%

[LEAD]
The IMF projected the South Korean economy to grow 0.8 percent in its latest outlook, a 0.2 percentage point decline from its previous forecast three months ago.

The figures suggest Korea is perceived to be more vulnerable to U.S. tariff-related impacts.

[REPORT]
The International Monetary Fund announces the global economic outlook four times a year, every three months.

In July’s outlook, the third one this year, tariffs remained the biggest uncertainty.

The IMF said although the U.S. tariff risk remains, it zeroed in on the fact that the effective tariff rates are actually lower than initially feared.

In its April forecast, the IMF said the global economy would expand 2.8%, but this time it raised the outlook by 0.2%p to 3.0%.

Donald Trump / U.S. President (July 29, local time)
I just wanna be nice. I would say in the range of 15 to 20 percent. Probably one of those two numbers.

For the same reason, the growth outlooks for most of the advanced economies have been upgraded.

The growth outlook for the U.S. has been raised from 1.8% to 1.9%, the EU from 0.8% to 1.0%, and Japan from 0.6% to 0.7%.

Meanwhile, South Korea's economic growth forecast has been downgraded by 0.2% from 1.0% to 0.8%.

It coincides with the latest projections from the Bank of Korea and the KDI for this year.

However, the IMF did not elaborate why it decided to slash South Korea's economic forecast.

It said that in addition to tariffs, there are many other risk factors in the global economy.

The downward factors include large fiscal deficits in the U.S., France and other major countries, and the possibility of tightening liquidity due to rising interest rates.