{"id":48728,"date":"2026-10-22T08:45:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T06:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=48728"},"modified":"2026-10-22T08:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T06:45:13","slug":"imf-sees-1-3-contraction-in-middle-east-north-africa-pakistan-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/imf-sees-1-3-contraction-in-middle-east-north-africa-pakistan-in-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF sees 1.3% contraction in Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday forecast a sharp drop in economic output in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan this year due to the \u200bUnited States, Israeli-led war against Iran, followed by a rebound to 6.6% growth in \u200c2027, while warning that further energy production disruptions could worsen the outlook.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>IMF said the region&#8217;s output was expected to contract by 1.3% as a result of the war&#8217;s \u200bimpact on energy production, shipping, tourism, trade and confidence.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Economic output would \u200bincrease sharply in 2027, but output in those economies would generally \u2060stay below pre-war projections.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The war&#8217;s impact had been substantial, but uneven, with oil-exporting \u200beconomies directly affected by disruptions to energy production and shipping hit harder, and oil \u200bimporters proving to be more resilient, the IMF said in its regional outlook released Thursday in Dubai.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The IMF said its baseline assumed that the conflict would abate in early 2027 and that \u200btrade would gradually normalise during the year, but it said the outlook remained \u200bclouded by &#8220;exceptionally high uncertainty.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":44013,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-48728","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"International Monetary Fund","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48730,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48728\/revisions\/48730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=48728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}