The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday raised its forecast for global economic growth in 2017, while China's robust economic growth is one of the main factors that supported the improved outlook.
Amid a rising tide of protectionism and increasing policy uncertainties, China's economy remains resilient, which has contributed a lot to global growth.
STRONGER GLOBAL GROWTH
In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecast the global economy will grow by 3.5 percent in 2017, an acceleration from the 3.1 percent growth last year and an upgrade of 0.1 percentage point from its January projection. It kept the 2018 forecast for global economic growth unchanged at 3.6 percent.
"Our new projection for 2017 is marginally higher than what we expected in our last update. This improvement comes primarily from good economic news for Europe and Asia, and within Asia, notably for China and Japan," IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld told a press conference on Tuesday.
Momentum in the global economy has been building since the middle of 2016, Obstfeld said, noting that the acceleration of global economic growth will be broad-based across advanced, emerging and low-income economies, building on gains in both manufacturing and trade.
Commodity prices have recovered since bottoming out a year ago, relieving global deflationary pressure, according to the IMF report.
It also described financial markets as "buoyant" amid expectations of further stimulus in China, along with fiscal expansion in the United States.
"The global economy seems to be gaining momentum -- we could be at a turning point," Obstfeld said.
