Federal Reserve officials projected Wednesday that the economy would grow 5 percent next year as it recovered from a projected 6.5 percent decline this year.
That would be the fastest annual growth in gross domestic product since 1984.
Fed chairman Jerome Powell emphasized, however, that the coronavirus pandemic has created a lot of uncertainty around economic developments.
“As we look ahead, we see the path for the economy is highly uncertain,” Powell said in a press conference following the two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank’s monetary policy panel.
The projections were released after the meeting concluded. They represent the views of individual committee members rather than an official view of the Fed.
The five percent projection is the median of the forecasts of members, which ranged from a decline of 1 percent to growth of 7 percent. The so-called ‘central tendency’ of the projections was for growth of 4.5 percent to 6.0 percent. – READ MORE
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