Funded projects increased by 3.6 percent, exceeding the World Bank’s forecast of 2.6 percent. Meanwhile, global growth is expected to decline to 3.1 percent in 2026 and 3.2 percent in 2025.

ISLAMABAD: In addition to increased inflation and a growing current account deficit, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday projected Pakistan’s economic growth rate for the current fiscal year at 3.6%, excluding the undetermined losses from the recent floods.

The Fund’s growth estimate, which comes after a two-week evaluation of Pakistan’s economy, is far higher than the World Bank’s earlier this month projections of 2.6 percent GDP growth and 7.2 percent inflation, which were based on the World Bank’s own estimates of flood-related damages.

The international lender predicted that global economic growth would decline from 3.3 percent in 2024 to 3.2 percent in 2025 and 3.1 percent in 2026 in its flagship World Economic Outlook (October 2025) report, which was presented at the start of the IMF and World Bank’s annual meetings. Although this is better than the IMF’s July projections, it is still 0.2 percentage points below the October prediction from last year, which was set before the most recent changes in international trade regulations. “Global growth is expected to slow down from 3.6 percent in 2024 to 2.6 percent in 2025 on an end-of-year basis,” the report said.

The IMF predicted that Pakistan’s current account balance would change from a 0.5 percent surplus to a 0.4 percent deficit in the upcoming year and that the country’s CPI-based average inflation rate would increase from 4.5 percent to 6 percent this year. The Fund did clarify that the estimates are preliminary and “do not yet reflect the impact of flooding in summer 2025, whose impact is still being assessed.”