A leading economist has forecast that the Y2K problem will slow down world growth in the year 2000. David Kern, NatWest Group’s chief economist says: Y2K is unlikely to trigger a major global recession but our central scenario envisages significant reductions in GDP growth in the year 2000 in all the world’s regions. While he argued that the impact of Y2K is likely to be more serious in the developing Asian economies and the former Soviet Union, Kern says there will be noticeable adverse effects amongst the advanced economies, including the US and UK. To take account of the Y2K impact, Kern has trimmed back previous growth forecasts for the year 2000 by 0.5 percent in US, Canada and the UK, by 0.6 percent for continental western Europe, by 0.7 percent for eastern Europe, Latin America, Japan and Australia/NZ and by 0.9 percent for the Asian developing economies and the former Soviet Union.
