China, India lead in Asia but new growth sources will shake up the global economy
- The latest World Economic Outlook projects China and India to grow as economic forces, with China’s economy becoming larger than the rest of the G7 combined by 2025
- Big shifts among smaller economies are also expected as Vietnam, Bangladesh and Ethiopia emerge as new drivers of global growth and investment

The WEO also includes longer-term forecasts for the next five years which, though largely unnoticed when they are published, can offer valuable insights into how the global economy might evolve. Remarkable changes were visible in the global economy through to 2025. Some were expected, but there were some surprises as well.
First, how reliable are these estimates? Forecasting GDP growth rates is difficult. WEO forecasts are subject to error, though they have been found to be at least as good as others. We are, however, primarily interested in the relative size and ranking of the world’s economies, not the specific annual growth forecasts.
Our analysis finds that, for example, the WEO five-year GDP forecasts from October 2014 correlated closely with outcomes as of 2019 for the 185 countries studied. The Spearman correlation – which uses only relative rankings rather than absolute GDP numbers – is also high.

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China and India have been among the largest economies in the world in current US dollars for more than a decade. China is projected to remain the second-largest economy in the world by this measure, behind the United States, through to 2025.