BREAKING NEWS

World Bank cuts growth outlook as advanced nations drag

WASHINGTON - A frustratingly slow economic recovery in developed nations is holding back the global economy, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as it sharply cut its outlook for world growth in 2013.
The World Bank forecast that global gross domestic product will inch up 2.4 percent this year, from 2.3 percent in 2012. In its last forecast in June, the bank projected global growth would reach 3.0 percent in 2013.
Andrew Burns, lead author of the bank's Global Economic Prospects report, said that a recovery the bank had anticipated last year was now expected "closer to the end of the first quarter and into the second quarter of 2013, rather than beginning a little earlier."
The Bank warned that a drawn-out political battle in the United States over raising the government's borrowing limit and spending cuts could hit growth, spark a loss of confidence in the US dollar and unnerve financial markets.