Two Forces Are Pulling the World Economy in Opposite Directions

The IMF projects global growth of 3.0% in 2026 and 3.4% in 2027, with the drag from the Middle East war partly offset by an AI-driven technology cycle, while inflation rises to 4.7% before easing.

The International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington. Photo: APK, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

By the UISC BD Editorial Desk · United Information Service Center · Published 10 September 2026 · 6-minute read

The International Monetary Fund projects global growth of 3.0 percent in 2026 and 3.4 percent in 2027, down from the 3.5 percent average of 2024 and 2025.

A half-point slowdown sounds unremarkable. The composition behind it is not.

The Fund's Own Framing

The IMF titled its mid-year assessment around a global economy caught in the crosscurrents of war and technology, and that phrase does most of the analytical work.

The drag comes from the war in the Middle East. The offset comes from accelerated demand-driven momentum in the global technology cycle, attributed to advances in artificial intelligence and the pace at which it is being adopted.

In other words: the world economy is growing more slowly than it was, and it would be growing considerably more slowly still without the AI investment cycle.

Who Wins and Who Loses

The Fund is explicit that the outlook is uneven, and the split does not follow the usual rich-poor line.

Energy exporters outside the conflict zone benefit from favourable terms of trade. Higher energy prices are a transfer from buyers to sellers, and sellers outside the war are collecting it.

Economies plugged into the technology-led upturn experience stronger activity even if they are energy importers. That is the striking finding. Participation in the AI value chain is now large enough to offset an energy price shock.

Energy importers not connected to the technology cycle get the shock without the offset. This is the group that includes most of South Asia, and it is the group Bangladesh sits in.

Inflation Stops Falling

Global headline inflation is projected to rise from 4.1 percent in 2025 to 4.7 percent in 2026, before easing to 3.9 percent in 2027.

The increase is driven mainly by higher energy and food prices.

This matters more for low-income households than the average figure suggests. Food and fuel are a much larger share of the basket for a family in Dhaka or Lagos than for one in Frankfurt, so the same headline number represents a much larger squeeze.

It also constrains central banks. An inflation rate moving up rather than down limits how far interest rates can fall, which keeps borrowing expensive for governments and firms in exactly the economies that most need cheap capital.

What This Means for Bangladesh

Bangladesh is an energy importer. It is not, currently, deeply integrated into the AI hardware value chain. On the Fund's own taxonomy, that is the least favourable position of the three.

Three specific consequences follow.

The import bill stays high. Energy and food price pressure lands directly on foreign exchange reserves, which is why the record $35 billion remittance year matters more than usual.

Export demand softens. Slower growth in the European Union and North America means weaker apparel orders. This is visible already — Bangladesh's overall exports declined slightly in FY2025-26 even as the export zones grew.

The technology channel is the available upside. The AI cycle is lifting economies that are connected to it, and connection does not require semiconductor fabrication. It requires services, software and skilled people — which is what Bangladesh's ICT export sector, its freelance workforce, its new data centres and its chip design firms are building.

The Honest Reading

A 3.0 percent world is not a crisis. It is below trend, above recession, and the average conceals enormous variation.

What the Fund has actually documented is that the single biggest determinant of an economy's performance right now is whether it participates in the technology cycle. That is a different world from the one where the answer was whether you export commodities or manufacture goods.

For a country deciding where to put scarce public investment, it is about as clear a signal as the IMF ever sends.

Sources

"World Economic Outlook Update, July 2026: Global economy in crosscurrents of war and technology," International Monetary Fund — imf.org
"World Economic Outlook Update, January 2026: Global economy steady amid divergent forces," International Monetary Fund — imf.org
"Press briefing transcript: World Economic Outlook, Spring Meetings 2026," International Monetary Fund — imf.org
"Global economic outlook 2026," Deloitte Insights — deloitte.com

global inflation 2026 (1)

The IMF Says AI Is Holding Up the World Economy While War Drags It Down