The IMF presented a significantly more pessimistic set of forecasts in its latest World Economic Outlook. Global growth is now expected to contract by 1.3% in 2009, whereas in October 2008 the Fund still believed world output would expand by 3% this year. Forecasts for the Euro area and Japan were dramatically cut to negative 4.2% and negative 6.2%, respectively. The outlook for 2010 is also pessimistic, especially for the Euro area, which is expected to remain in recession. The forecasts for Emerging Europe and the CIS were also substantially downgraded in particular for Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States. The new set of IMF forecasts are now more or less in line with the latest OECD forecasts. However, the projections for Emerging Europe and CIS are at the lower end of the current market forecast range in our view. It remains to be seen how soon the market will adjust its projections for the region. Our forecasts are less pessimistic for some countries, in particular Russia and to a lesser extent Poland and Turkey. Our Turkey forecast is closer to the latest CBT survey, which stands at -3.6% and our Poland forecast is also relatively close the latest Reuters poll survey, which stands at 0.8%. Based on this the IMF is more pessimistic than the majority of analysts, but we admit that the risk is that consensus might have to be downgraded. The same applies to Russia given that the Reuters poll from end-March puts the median forecast for 2009 at -2.9%. Overall, the IMF forecasts are a stark reminder that this is the worst recession since the 1930s.