Lagarde: Oil price fall ‘good news’ for world economy

Lagarde: Oil price fall ‘good news’ for world economy

Christine Lagarde

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

Published — Wednesday 3 December 2014

http://www.arabnews.com/news/668891

WASHINGTON: The plunge in oil prices since June may hurt some crude exporters but is overall a good thing for the world economy, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Monday.

“There will be winners and losers, but on a net basis it's good news for the global economy,” she said in Washington.

Oil prices have fallen sharply since late June, losing around 30 percent as supplies increase and global demand for oil grows more slowly.

While some exporters are hurting from the price fall, overall it will add significantly to global growth as consumers and businesses pay less for energy. “It's likely to be an additional 0.8 percent (of growth) for most advanced economies, because all of them are importers of oil, whether you look at US, Japan, certainly Europe... and China,” she said.

Crude oil exporters “are taking a hit, for some of them it's a calculated hit,” Lagarde said.

In October, the IMF cut its forecast for global growth this year to 3.3 percent and to 3.8 percent in 2015, citing stagnation in Europe and Japan and the slowdown in emerging economies.

Lagarde was speaking at a conference of corporate chief executives sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

International Monetary Fund

Christine Lagarde is a managing director for the International Monetary Fund, was the finance minister for France, and attended George Soros’s 2013 wedding reception.

Note: George Soros was married in 2013, the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee.

Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the International Rescue Committee, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank), and the New America Foundation.

Timothy F. Geithner is a director at the International Rescue Committee, was an overseer at the International Rescue Committee, the director of policy development & review for the International Monetary Fund, and the treasury secretary for the Barack Obama administration.

Jon M. Huntsman Jr. was the ambassador to China for the Barack Obama administration, and a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank).

Mohamed A. El-Erian is a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank), a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, and was the deputy director for the International Monetary Fund.

Douglas A. Rediker is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and was the U.S. alternate executive director for the International Monetary Fund.

Joe Mathews was a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.