IMF: Brexit Britain to Outgrow Eurozone and Biden’s America by 2022

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 29: Pro-EU and pro-Brexit protestors discuss the vote and ongoin
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that Brexit Britain will grow faster than the Eurozone as well as the United States by next year, despite having one of the steepest contractions of any major Western nation during the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

The IMF’s April 2021 World Economic Outlook edition said that the UK is projected to grow by 5.3 per cent this year and 5.1 per cent in 2022, revising earlier projections up by 0.8 per cent. The Eurozone, by contrast, is merely expected to grow by 4.4 per cent this year and 3.8 per cent next year.

The economic outlook for the United States under President Joe Biden is also expected to falter, declining from 6.4 per cent growth in 2021 down to 3.5 per cent during the second year of the Democrat presidency.

The IMF said that the UK economy contracted by a massive 9.9 per cent in 2020, the most of any European country, with the exception of Spain.

The recession was caused in large part due to the draconian lockdown measures introduced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s nominally Conservative government, however, Britain is set to rebound as a result of a comparatively successful vaccination campaign.

“As the vulnerable population gets vaccinated, contact-intensive activities are expected to resume and drive a significant pickup in growth thanks to pent-up demand funded by accumulated savings in 2020,” the IMF report said.

The IMF did caution, however, that the economic projections for Britain will be dependent on the removal of lockdown restrictions on schedule.

The rosy outlook from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seemingly repudiates the long-held anti-Brexit attitudes of the globalist institution.

Just prior to the 2016 EU referendum, then-IMF chief Christine Lagarde published a report claiming that Brexit would cost the United Kingdom half a million jobs.

The IMF went on to warn that merely leaving the EU would plunge the country into a recession, warning of “large contractions investment and consumption, implying lower output, lower growth, and higher domestic prices.”

The ability of the UK to fast-track coronavirus vaccine approvals — free from the bureaucratic restrictions of the European Commission — has widely been credited as a success of Brexit, with one German newspaper declaring that the disparity between the UK and the EU’s vaccine push has been “the best advertisement for Brexit.” Others have argued Brexit had nothing to do with the vaccine rollout, however, as despite European Union members acting collectively they theoretically could have decided not to.

In response to the latest positive economic projections, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the vaccine rollout and the gradual lifting of lockdown restrictions in Britain mean that “there are reasons for optimism, and we are paving the way for brighter times ahead.”

The investment bank Goldman Sachs was even more optimistic for the economic outlook for Brexit Britain, predicting that the economy could grow by as much as 7.1 per cent this year.

“This reflects the enormous improvement in the public health situation on the back of surging vaccinations – daily fatalities have fallen by a whopping 97% from their January peak – and the substantial room for rebound given the outsized 7.8% drop in real GDP through 2020,” said Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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