Aussie With Smallest Debt Among Advanced Economies - IMF
The recent World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund has seen a significant growth from the advanced economies based on global activity.
The growth is forecast to continue from 2014 to 2015. Speaking in a press briefing, Olivier Blanchard, economic counselor and director of the research department, said IMF is seeing growth to reach 2.2 percent in 2014, up from 1.3 percent in 2013.
"The dynamics that were emerging at the time of the last WEO in October are becoming more visible. Put simply, the recovery is strengthening. We forecast world growth to be 3.6 percent this year, 2014, 3.9 percent next year, up from 3.3 percent in 2013. So, a substantial improvement."
Blanchard noted the strongest economic growth was seen in the U.S. with 2.8 percent in 2014.
The UK and Germany also showed impressive growth with UK with 2.9 percent and Germany with 1.7 percent.
Japan is also forecast to attain 1.4 percent growth in 2014. But Blanchard said they saw a very low economic activity from the advanced economies.
"Potential growth in many advanced economies is very low. Now, this is bad on its own, but it also makes fiscal adjustments that most countries have to do much more difficult. So, in this context, measures to increase potential growth are becoming more important. These range from rethinking the shape of labor market institutions to increasing competition and productivity in a number of nontradable sectors, to rethinking the size of the government in some countries, to reexamining-examining the role of public investment," Blanchard said.
Among the advanced economies, Australia has the smallest government debt, but the country is one among the economy with the largest deficit.
IMF estimated Australia's deficit can reach 2.3 percent of the $37 billion GDP for 2014. In an average, the advance economies' overall deficit is equivalent to 1.3 percent of GDP.
In IMF's calculation, Australia's debt for 2014 will bounce back if the country requires savings from federal and state budgets of 5.6 percent of GDP, equivalent to $90 billion.
The estimated $90 billion represents 15 percent of all Australia's government spending.