According to the international panel of private forecasters recently polled by Consensus Economics Inc, global GDP1 will have risen by 5 per cent in 2004. This does not include the recent round of data revisions in Japan, and so may be adjusted down a little.
Even so, it is hard to see how the outcome will not be at least a full percentage point above the long-run average and as strong as any year in the past thirty. Graph 1  Click to view larger As always, there were short-term departures from the established trend.