Sri Lanka, Oct. 15 -- Asia should deepen internal trade to include more final goods and more services and press forward with reforms to strengthen the service sector and access to finance and analysis suggests a push for more regional integration-notably by lowering nontariff barriers-could raise GDP by 1.8 percent in the long run, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, IMF told the IMF Annual Meeting 2025 curtain raiser.

Georgieva said the world economy is coping, "better than feared, but worse than we need". When we met in April, many experts-not us-predicted a U.S. recession in the near term, with negative spillovers to the rest of the world. Instead, the U.S. economy as well as many other advanced and emerging markets, and some dev...