Economists polled by the FT see an AI growth surge; the IMF says few will feel it

The global economy is set for an AI-driven surge, according to a Financial Times survey of economists, whose respondents expect productivity gains from the technology¹. The International Monetary Fund put a condition on the same story: the AI boom is cushioning the global economy but widening the growth divide, and energy-importing economies with limited exposure to the technology’s value chain are the ones left out unless the gains spread beyond a small group².

The Fund has also measured a cost. An IMF report found that AI has cut job demand in exposed occupations by nearly ten per cent across Asia, while employers increasingly look for workers who can integrate the technology into business processes and turn it into productivity³.

The numbers behind it

The Fund raised its Asia-Pacific growth forecast to 4.8 per cent for 2026 and 4.4 per cent for next year, citing resilience in the face of energy shocks, tariffs and supply-chain disruption⁴. It also nudged its global growth projection for 2026 up to 3.1 per cent from 3.0 per cent in its July round, while warning that global resilience is at risk as fuel reserves dwindle⁸.

These are the Fund’s own projections, published alongside its annual meetings, and the survey is the Financial Times’s poll of economists rather than an official forecast^1,8.

The two sets of figures are not in conflict: a slightly faster global forecast and a wider divide between economies can hold at once, which is the Fund’s own framing^2,8.

The caution from Bangkok

Officials at the meetings were more guarded than the survey. Some cautioned against relying too heavily on AI investment as a source of growth, France 24 reported⁵. Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said of the technology on Friday: “It is everywhere in the global economy”⁷. The BBC’s economics editor reported that finance and business leaders at the Bangkok meeting spent the week grappling with uncertainty, with China and AI at the centre of their worries⁶.

The Fund’s managing director framed the task as managing the risks of the transition rather than assuming the gains, in an article arguing that the world cannot afford to get AI wrong⁹.

What to watch

Whether the productivity gains the survey anticipates begin appearing in measured output rather than in capital spending¹; whether the divide the Fund describes widens for energy importers²; and whether the labour-demand effect found in Asia shows up in other regions³.