The terrorist blitz on the United States on September 11 will result in a fall of 2.2 percent in gross domestic product (GDP) worldwide next year and of 1.2 percent in Britain, an economic research unit has predicted.
Projections of worldwide GDP for 2002 have been sliced by $466.71 billion (€746.73 billion), the Center for Economics and Business Research said in a report. The projections compound fears of a looming global economic recession in the wake of the attacks, which flattened the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and killed more than 6,000 people.
"The predictions we made three months ago were already more pessimistic than those of most economic analysts, and had the terrible events not happened we would have left the numbers more or less unchanged," report author Douglas McWilliams said.
"Although the outlook is highly uncertain, we are clear that in the short term the world economy has been dealt a blow which will depress world growth for at least the next nine months and possibly for longer."
McWilliams said the projections are based on three factors — that there are no further terrorist attacks, that expected reprisals by the US do "not destabilize the world economy further", and public spending in the US is increased.
"Clearly the outcomes could be much worse than this. But we have had to choose a set of base assumptions and these look as likely as any," he told BBC television late Sunday. ― (AFP, London)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
