It has reduced its figure to 3.1% from the 3.3% it predicted in July. The 2016 forecast is down to 3.6% from 3.8%.
"A return to robust and synchronized global expansion remains elusive," the IMF says.
The report also warns that the risks of an outcome worse than its forecasts are more pronounced than they were just a few months ago.
The sharpest downgrades are for emerging economies, especially Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa and Russia.
So the IMF is still predicting growth, but it is distinctly lacklustre growth, especially for the current year.
Modest recovery
The developed
economies are expected to manage slightly stronger growth than before,
reflecting the modest recovery in the eurozone and the return of growth
in Japan, though that looks tentative at best.
Receding legacies
from the financial crisis are elements in that story, as is the
long-lasting support from central bank policies - low and zero interest
rates and also quantitative easing, which continues in the eurozone and
Japan.
The
emerging and developing economies still account for what the IMF calls
the lion's share of global growth, but they are slowing, in 2015 for the
fifth consecutive year.
One important factor is China's economic
transition - from very rapid growth driven by investment and industrial
exports to moderate expansion based to a greater extent on Chinese
consumer spending increasingly on services.
The IMF mentions that
shift as one direct factor behind the emerging world slowdown. But China
is also a key element behind other forces,
Commodity prices
Oil
producers have been hit by the decline in the price of their exports.
Nigeria and Russia are striking examples. China's slowdown is one of the
underlying forces, along with abundant supplies of crude oil.
The
report also mentions the declines of other commodity prices as a
factor, especially in Latin America. Some countries also have domestic
political issues that have encroached onto economic performance; Brazil
for example.
The other downbeat element in this report is the
view of risks - how the global economy might perform differently from
this forecast.
Financial market volatility is a possible danger,
if interest rate rises in the US encourage investors to move funds out
of emerging economies more rapidly than they have done already.
Increased
debt in the emerging economies, lower commodity prices and slower
growth could undermine their financial stability, which could in turn
hit wider economic performance.
China's slowdown is another possible trouble spot, if it does not manage its economic transition reasonably smoothly.
There
is also the possibility of lower potential growth - that's a
wide-ranging term for factors that govern the maximum capacity of an
economy to grow if nothing much goes wrong. Weak investment (though not
in China) and the effect of longer-term unemployment on workers' skills
are examples of forces that could do further damage.
And there's
one more risk we have heard about before: Greece. In terms of the
international economic impact the situation has calmed greatly. But the
IMF warns there is the potential for renewed financial stress in Europe
if there is fresh political uncertainty there.
Still, the IMF's
main forecast is for growth to pick up somewhat next year - globally and
in the emerging economies. It's just that it is still not all that
convincing a recovery.
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