As energy and inflation crises risk snowballing into recessions in major economies, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no signs of easing, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) cut its forecast for global economic growth.

While global growth this year was still expected to be 3.0 percent, it is now projected to slow to 2.2 percent in 2023, revised down from a forecast in June of 2.8 percent, the OECD said on Monday.

The Paris-based policy forum was particularly pessimistic about the outlook in Europe, which is caught in an energy crisis.

The OECD projected eurozone economic growth would slow from 3.1 percent this year to only 0.3 percent in 2023, which implies the 19-nation shared currency bloc would spend at least part of the year in a recession, defined as two straight quarters of contraction.

That marked a dramatic downgrade from the OECD's last economic outlook in June, when it had forecast the eurozone's economy would grow 1.6 percent next year.

The OECD was especially gloomy about Germany's Russian-gas dependent economy, forecasting it would contract 0.7 percent next year, slashed from a June estimate for 1.7 percent growth.

The OECD warned that further disruptions to energy supplies would hit growth and boost inflation, especially in Europe where they could knock activity back another 1.25 percentage points and boost inflation by 1.5 percentage points, pushing many countries into recession for the full year of 2023.

In an outlook report released in July, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected the global economy growth to slow from 6.1 percent last year to 3.2 percent in 2022, a 0.4 percentage point lower than in the World Economic Outlook released in April 2022. Meanwhile, the IMF predicted global output would grow by just 2.9 percent in 2023. 

(Source: Reuters with edits)