Ghana’s public debt will hit 72% of GDP — New International Monetary Fund report

This is lower than the 0.5 per cent contraction that the International Monetary Fund projected in its April report. “Emerging market and developing economies face a hard trade-off between supporting demand amid slowing growth – actual and potential – and reducing vulnerabilities in a more hard external environment”.

Lower global oil prices have also boosted economic activity in India and underpinned a further improvement in the current account and fiscal position and a sharp decline in inflation, it said.

Global growth for 2015 is projected at 3.1 per cent, 0.3 percentage points lower than in 2014 and 0.2 percentage points below forecasts made in the July 2015 WEO Update.

Economic growth in the Philippines is stable at six per cent while Vietnam’s GDP is expected to expand 6.5 per cent as the country benefits from the weakening oil price windfall.

Despite the downgrade, the IMF’s main forecast for 2016 is for growth to pick up “somewhat” globally and in the emerging economies.

Growth in advanced economies is projected to increase modestly this year and next.

“With the revival of consumer and business sentiment, the incipient recovery of investment is expected to contribute more to growth going forward”, it said.

The stark warning, from the director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department Jose Vinals, comes just a day after the IMF said the outlook for emerging markets had weakened.

The Washington-based lender of last resort said the scale of debts racked up by such economies, much of it vulnerable to higher interest rates in the United States, meant policymakers needed to act quickly to shore up the financial system.

STR/AFP/Getty Images China has soared nearly to the top of the world’s economic league tables, but as growth flags there is increasing scepticism about official statistics – and a fierce debate over alternative indicators.

It said China – the world’s second-largest economy – will grow by 6.8 per cent this year and 6.3 per cent next, which is below Beijing’s 7 per cent targeted growth rate.

Financial market volatility is a possible danger, if interest rate rises in the U.S. encourage investors to move funds out of emerging economies more rapidly than they have done already. Emerging market economies will likely grow 4 percent, which would mark the fifth straight annual drop.

The World Bank predicts a 2 percent growth in Azerbaijan’s economy in 2015, while the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development kept the growth forecast at 1.5 percent for 2015-2016.