Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, says the outlook is ‘too low, too brittle and too lopsided’ Low oil prices will not provide a sufficient updraught to dispel the clouds hanging over the global economy, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. In a sign of its increasing gloom about the medium-term economic outlook, the IMF cut its global economic growth forecasts by 0.3 percentage points for both 2015 and 2016 despite believing cheaper oil represents a “shot in the arm”. Its 2015 forecast for the UK was unchanged at 2.7 per cent and cut by 0.1 percentage point for next year to 2.4 per cent compared with its previous forecast in its World Economic Outlook last October. Its outlook for the UK is broadly favourable despite uncertainty about the general election, with the faltering eurozone economy likely to prove the biggest brake on growth. Last year the IMF described […]