WB’s Zoellick says double-dip recession unlikely

SINGAPORE – The global economy is unlikely to fall back into recession but there are risks, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Tuesday. “I don’t believe that the United States or the world will go into a double-dip but there’s a high degree of uncertainty,” Zoellick told reporters in Singapore. The United States is more likely to go through a period of slow growth with ongoing high unemployment, he added.

His comments come after Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who also chairs a key International Monetary Fund committee, said the world is “more likely than not” to see a recession as growth in both the United States and Europe have fallen to “stall” speed. On Europe, the World Bank president said Europe Union had to consider working closer in the area of fiscal policy to address the problems facing its members. “One direction is to deepen the fiscal union,” he said, adding the policies pursued up to now, such as the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility and bond buying by the European Central Bank, could only buy the EU time to address the problems it faced. –Reuters