Prospects Group

Select a EDS Sub navigation page selecting option, leaving this page
  • Global Monthly, October 2025

    Global Monthly, October 2025

    This newsletter provides an analysis of major trends affecting the global economy, highlights key data points, and examines important current topics. From the September issue:
      * Headline activity data generally point to continued resilience in the global economy, despite ongoing trade tensions and elevated uncertainty.
      * Consensus forecasts for global growth in 2025 have firmed in recent months, returning to January levels, having dipped earlier in the year.
      * Precious metals prices have risen, in part reflecting their perceived safe-haven status amid uncertainty.

  • Ayhan Kose Discusses Outlook for the World Economy

    Ayhan Kose Discusses Outlook for the World Economy

    Global growth is projected to slow to 2.3 percent in 2025, nearly half a percentage point lower than the rate that had been expected at the start of the year, according to the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report. Ayhan Kose, the World Bank Group’s Deputy Chief Economist and Director of the Prospects Group, joins Expert Answers to discuss the context of these challenges and paths forward. He also discusses two special chapters of the report outlining trends that are making development more challenging. The first, dwindling flows of foreign direct investment. The second, the worsening plight of fragile and conflict-affected situations.

  • Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations - Explainer by Dana Vorisek

    Dana Vorisek Discusses World's Most Vulnerable Economies

    Conflict and instability are taking a devastating toll on the 39 economies afflicted by them, driving up extreme poverty faster than anywhere else, intensifying acute hunger, and pushing several key development goals farther out of reach, according to the World Bank’s first comprehensive assessment of their plight in the aftermath of COVID-19. As conflicts have become more frequent and deadly in the 2020s, these economies are falling behind all other economies in key indicators of development, the analysis finds. Learn more from Dana Vorisek, Lead Economist with the World Bank's Prospects Group.

  • Accelerating Investment: Challenges and Policies

    Accelerating Investment: Challenges and Policies

    Investment is the engine that expands productive capacity, modernizes infrastructure, creates jobs, and drives progress toward development and climate goals. Yet developing economies face an investment shortfall of historic proportions. Even as development needs rise, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s. Public investment alone cannot fill this gap. Private investment must play the leading role in reigniting growth, creating jobs, and supporting the transition to a more sustainable and resilient future.This book presents the World Bank’s most comprehensive assessment of investment in emerging and developing economies. It examines why investment matters, why it has stalled, and what it will take to revive it. 

  • World Bank Group Senior Economist, Collette Wheeler joins Expert Answers

    Collette Wheeler Discusses Opportunities and Risks Facing World's Poorest

    A historic reversal is underway in the 75 most vulnerable economies eligible for grants and zero to low-interest loans from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA). Half of IDA countries are experiencing a widening income gap with the wealthiest economies for the first time in this century. One out of three IDA countries is poorer, on average, than it was on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. The extreme-poverty rate is more than eight times the average in the rest of the world: one in four people in IDA countries struggles on less than $2.15 a day. Learn how this "great reversal" can be halted from Collette Wheeler, World Bank Group Senior Economist.

  • Public Institutions Data and Analytics Global Unit - GEP Branded Cover Image

    Global Economic Prospects, June 2025

    The global economy is facing substantial headwinds, emanating largely from an increase in trade tensions and heightened global policy uncertainty. For emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), the weak outlook limits their ability to boost job creation and reduce extreme poverty. This challenging context is compounded by subdued foreign direct investment into EMDEs. Global cooperation is needed to restore a more stable global trade environment and scale up support for vulnerable countries, including those in fragile and conflict situations. Domestic policy action is also critical to contain inflation risks and strengthen fiscal resilience.  

  • CMO24_Oct_PR Image_1340X745 - 1

    Commodity Markets Outlook, April 2025

    Commodity prices are set to fall sharply this year, by about 12 percent overall, as weakening global economic growth weighs on demand. In 2026, commodity prices are projected to reach a six-year low. Oil prices are expected to exert substantial downward pressure on the aggregate commodity index in 2025, as a marked slowdown in global oil consumption coincides with expanding supply. The anticipated softening in prices is broad-based, with more than half of the commodities in the forecast set to decrease this year, many by more than 10 percent. The latest shocks to hit commodity markets extend a so far tumultuous decade, marked by the highest level of commodity price volatility in at least half a century. 

Prospects Group at a Glance

The Prospects Group has the mandate to produce timely and high-quality analytical, monitoring, and operational work on global economic developments and policy challenges. The Group produces the World Bank Group corporate flagship Global Economic Prospects report, hosts one of the longest-established commodities units among international financial institutions, prepares in-depth analytical studies on topical macroeconomic issues relevant for client country policy makers, and frequently briefs the World Bank Group’s Senior Management and Executive Board on such issues. In addition, it provides extensive cross-support to Regional Chief Economists’ offices, Global Practices, IFC and country teams. 

Key products include:

MEET THE DIRECTOR

MEET THE ECONOMISTS Arrow