While global economic growth is expected to remain subdued, at 3.2%, this year, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) latest edition of the ‘World Economic Outlook (WEO)’ points to expected growth of 3.4% for sub-Saharan Africa.

With global growth expected to increase to 3.5% in 2020, sub-Saharan Africa is likely to see growth of 3.6% in 2020, 0.1 percentage points lower for both years than in the April WEO.

Strong growth in many nonresource-intensive countries partially offset the lacklustre performance of the region’s largest economies, the IMF said last week.

The organisation added that, while higher, albeit volatile, oil prices had supported the outlook for Angola, Nigeria and other oil-exporting countries in the region, growth at a subdued pace was expected in South Africa for this year, following a very weak first quarter.

South Africa’s projected growth has been revised downward to 0.7% this year and 1.1% for 2020, 0.5 percentage points and 0.4 percentage points lower than in the April WEO respectively.

This, the IMF said, reflected a larger-than-expected impact of strike activity, energy supply issues in mining and weak agricultural production in the country.

The rest of the emerging market and the developing economy group are expected to grow at 4.1% in 2019, rising to 4.7% in 2020. The forecasts for 2019 and 2020 were 0.3 and 0.1 percentage points respectively, lower than in April, the IMF said.

Globally, growth forecasts have been impacted on by generally softening inflation, which points to weaker-than-expected global activity. Investment and demand for consumer durables have been subdued across advanced and emerging market economies as firms and households continue to hold back on long-term spending, the IMF said.

Accordingly, global trade, which mostly involved machinery and consumer durables, remains sluggish.

The IMF added that the projected growth pick-up in 2020 was precarious, presuming stabilisation in currently stressed emerging market and developing economies and progress towards resolving trade policy differences.