2024 Global Economic Outlook: Trends and Predictions

At a glance

Learn about the biggest economic risks shaping business in 2024
Understand how AI, sustainability and geopolitics are changing finance
Gain practical insight from CFOs navigating uncertainty worldwide

Report by:

This is an inaugural annual prospects report, which we hope will help you and your stakeholders navigate the many challenges and risks in the global economy in the year ahead.

In differentiating it from the many other outlook publications produced around this time of year, we include summaries of interviews with chief financial officers from across the globe.

The report is divided into four sections:

Section 1 discusses the prospects for the global economy and key countries in 2024, as well as some of the major risks.
Section 2 highlights the key risk events to watch, in a year packed full of elections around the globe.
Section 3 examines three key trends to follow closely over 2024:

1. further backsliding by governments on policies intended to achieve the green transition;
2. rising geo-economic fragmentation; and
3. developments with artificial intelligence.

Section 4 contains summaries of interviews with CFOs from across the globe, hearing their bottom-up perspectives from the corporate level on the outlook for 2024 and beyond.

The global economy looks set to grow slowly once again in 2024, and downside risks remain. The lagged impact of past monetary tightening could lead to an even more pronounced slowing in growth, and geopolitical risks remain very heightened, while the busy political calendar adds a sizeable extra degree of uncertainty and potential volatility.

Jonathan Ashworth

Chief Economist, ACCA