The IMF forecast that the world economy would shrink by 1.3% in 2009, the first global fall in 60 years. In January the fund predicted growth of 0.5%.
Japan’s customs-based exports fell by 45.6% in the year to March. The rate of decline slowed, raising hopes that the export slump may be bottoming out. Imports fell by only 36.7% on a year earlier, which caused Japan’s monthly trade surplus to shrink to 10.9 billion yen ($112m) last month from 1.1 trillion yen in March last year
Producer prices in Germany fell by 0.5% in the year to March, the first fall since February 2004 and the biggest since September 2002. However, the ZEW index of German investor and analyst expectations, a widely used measure of investor confidence, rose to 13 in April from -3.5 a month earlier.
Britain’s annual consumer-price inflation rate fell to 2.9% in March from 3.2% in February. But retail prices, unchanged in February, fell by 0.4% in the year to March.
Sweden’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point, to 0.5%. India’s Reserve Bank reduced the repurchase rate to 4.75%, and shaved a quarter of a percentage point off the reverse repurchase rate, to 3.25%. It was the sixth cut in as many months.
Consumer prices in Australia rose by 2.5% in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2008. Prices rose by 0.1% over the previous quarter.
