Why we should not believe all the IMF's gloomy predictions

The IMF's bleak projections of a recessionary year ahead for the British economy forecasting it would perform worse even than Russia's have been a major talking point this week.

- Daniel O'Boyle

But an analysis by the Evening Standard may bring some comfort to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt as it suggests the IMF's track record on predicting the UK's post-Covid recovery is a long way from infallible.

For those looking for reasons to believe that the British economy will do better than the IMF's projection of a 0.6% fall, the IMF's forecasting record in 2021- the last full year with official GDP data may offer hope.

The IMF made four GDP projections in 2021: in January, April, July and October. The last three of these reports were all more pessimistic than the average - and ended up missing the actual outcome by a wider margin.

The four IMF projections were out by an average of 1.7 percentage points in 2021. This was worse than the average of a sample of 34 independent forecasters collected by the Treasury which missed by an average of 1.55 percentage points.