Investor survey: global business sector’s expectations for world economic growth this year are deteriorating markedly

By: Trademagazin Date: 2025. 05. 06. 11:25

The global business sector’s expectations for this year’s global economic growth are deteriorating markedly due to the tariff war, according to a recent investor survey presented in London by Oxford Economics, one of the most prestigious financial and economic analysis workshops.

The company examined the expectations of 125 large companies worldwide. The companies included in the survey employ six million people together and have a combined annual turnover of approximately two trillion dollars.

According to the company’s own developed Global Business Sentiment Index, the corporate sector of the global economy – considering the median value of expectations – expects that by the end of 2025 the growth rate of global gross domestic product (GDP) will slow to barely 1.2 percent year-on-year.

Oxford Economics emphasizes that this is exactly half of the expectations shown in its first survey of this year, in January.

Half of the businesses surveyed stated that they had become significantly more pessimistic in their assessment of global growth prospects for the next two years.

Oxford Economics stresses that the proportion of companies whose global growth expectations have deteriorated significantly between two surveys has never been so high in the history of previous surveys.

The median global growth forecast for the whole of 2025 for the companies included in the current survey is currently 1.6 percent, significantly below the 2.3 percent predicted for this year in Oxford Economics’ own base case forecast.

The global corporate sector’s full-year global economic growth expectations for this year have deteriorated by 0.4 percentage points since March and by 0.7 percentage points since January, according to the Oxford Economics analysis.