World economy

Since the beginning of the year, we have become notably more optimistic about the global economic outlook for 2021. We have raised our global GDP growth forecast to 6.1% from 5.0% in January. In the near‐term, risks are skewed to the downside, reflecting the risk of greater economic damage from rising Covid‐19 cases at a global level. But beyond that the risks are probably skewed to the upside – a sustained relaxation of restrictions could lead to a bigger rebound in demand if households run down their excess savings by more than we assume in our baseline forecast.