BANGKOK
\nInternational Monetary Fund head Kristalina Georgieva said Wednesday that recent attacks on Saudi Arabia could impact people \u201ceverywhere,\u201d as conflict in the region adds to wide-ranging economic concerns. The Houthi strikes on Riyadh\u2019s international airport at the weekend left 13 people dead and operations suspended in the worst attack since 2015.
\n\u201cThe Saudi economy is important for the region and the world,\u201d IMF managing director Georgieva said at a news conference during the Annual Meetings of the Fund and World Bank in Bangkok. \u201cIn that sense, these developments have potentially negative spillovers for everybody, everywhere,\u201d she said.
\nThe warning comes as officials and experts gather in the Thai capital to discuss challenges facing the global economy, including higher energy costs and concerns about the sustainability of an artificial intelligence boom. Other hurdles include ballooning debt in advanced economies, with bond yields at multi-decade highs as pressure grows on central banks to hike interest rates to cool inflation.
\n\u201cWhat is our loudest call to policymakers right now? Make urgent repairs to the fiscal house before the cracks widen,\u201d Georgieva said. \u201cNow is the time to enhance revenues, to rationalize spending and improve public financial management.\u201d
\nIn its closely watched World Economic Outlook released on Tuesday, the IMF raised its 2026 global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points to 3.1 percent. However, it warned that while new economic activity has been sparked by rising investment in AI, poorer countries are not benefiting as they deal with soaring energy costs.
\nThe global economy \u201cremains resilient in the face of very frequent repetitive shocks and in the face of uncertainty,\u201d Georgieva said. \u201cBut this resilience is reaching its limits.\u201d The IMF chief called for greater support for low-income countries to \u201cstrengthen their fundamentals so they can withstand shocks.\u201d
\nShe noted that a global rise in interest rates had also caused debt servicing costs to increase from around six percent of government revenues a decade ago to 14 percent today. And in its Global Policy Agenda released on Wednesday, the Fund warned that debt servicing challenges had become particularly acute for \u201clow-income and vulnerable economies.\u201d
\nGeorgieva said the IMF had been \u201cringing the alarm bell on excessive global economic imbalances growing.\u201d \u201cTo put it very simply, China needs to spend more, the US has to save more and Europe has to invest more,\u201d she added.
\nAdvanced economies have seen their debt-to-GDP ratios skyrocket since the Covid-19 pandemic and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, with governments forced to increase spending to cushion the impact of those shocks. In China, a persistent slump in domestic demand has coincided with a historic surge in exports, accumulating trade surpluses that are becoming more and more politically problematic abroad.
\nAddressing the issue of how to tackle spiking bond yields, Georgieva admitted \u201cthere is no magic.\u201d \u201cYou have to go in a direction of tightening debt (and) bringing it down,\u201d she said. \u201c(The) message that we are sending to our members: fundamentals matter. Get your house in order; otherwise, your people, your businesses will pay a price.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BANGKOK International Monetary Fund head Kristalina Georgieva said Wednesday that recent attacks on Saudi Arabia could impact people \u201ceverywhere,\u201d as conflict in the region adds to wide-ranging economic concerns. The Houthi strikes on Riyadh\u2019s international airport at the weekend left 13 people dead and operations suspended in the worst attack since 2015. \u201cThe Saudi economy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104367,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104339\/revisions\/104367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}