Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London.
I'm Rebecca Kesby.
Today, the International Monetary Fund has warned that if the conflict in the Middle East continues,
there could be another global recession.
Delivering its World Economic Outlook report,
the IMF suggested that in the worst case scenario where oil and gas prices stay high,
pushing up food prices and unemployment rates, global growth could fall below 2% for this year.
And inflation could rise as much as 6% next year.
Chief Economist for the IMF Pierre-Oliver Gouronchard told the BBC that central banks need to be cautious
when making interest rate decisions given those lower projected growth rates and possible higher rates of inflation.
In both of these scenarios, we look at what happens if energy prices become even more elevated,
a longer disruption, more destruction of facilities, more disruption of the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz.
And then if we have that, then we're going to have other things as well.
What are we going to have?
We 're going to have a lot more inflation,
and people are going to look at this inflation and are going to think, this is not going away.
So we'll see inflation expectations start going up.
And then we'll also have financial markets looking at this and say, this is not good.
Well, our economics editor Faisal Islam is at the IMF meeting and managed to grab a moment
with the US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on the fringes.