BANGKOK — The head of the International Monetary Fund closed a week of high-level meetings on Saturday with a blunt message: the world economy is holding up, but the poorest countries are being left behind — and artificial intelligence could soon shake up the job market in almost every country.
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said her talks with finance ministers and central bankers in Bangkok showed both “optimism and worry.” The annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank ran from October 12 to 18 and drew officials from the fund’s 191 member countries.
A world split in two
The optimism is easy to explain. Global growth has stayed stronger than many experts predicted. Asian economies are moving fast. And the boom in artificial intelligence is pulling huge sums of investment into wealthy countries.
The worry is about who is missing out on all of it.
Georgieva said poor nations are getting almost none of the AI investment wave. At the same time, they are paying more to borrow money than they have in years. Low-income countries now spend between 8 and 14 percent of their government income just on debt payments — money that cannot go to schools, hospitals, or roads.
“People everywhere, but especially in poorer countries, don’t like inflation,” Georgieva told reporters. “Inflation is like a tax on the poor.”
War keeps pushing prices up
Energy costs are a large part of the problem. Oil and gas prices jumped in February, after the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran. The fighting since then has hit shipping lanes and energy supplies across the Middle East.
Countries that must import their fuel have paid the highest price. Higher transport and energy costs feed straight into the price of food and everyday goods, hurting ordinary families first.
Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, who chaired the ministers’ steering committee, warned that more conflict and trade disputes could make things worse. He said they could block key trade routes and push energy and food prices even higher, deepening the crisis for the most exposed nations.
AI and the future of work
The other big theme in Bangkok was artificial intelligence — and what it means for workers.
Georgieva said AI could affect about 40 percent of jobs around the world. In wealthy countries the share could reach 60 percent, while in poor countries it sits near 23 percent. She described the change as slow-moving but powerful: some jobs will vanish, and many more will change as machines take over parts of what people do each day.
The IMF chief urged governments to act now — retrain workers for new kinds of jobs, strengthen safety nets, and make sure the gains from AI do not flow only to big technology firms and rich investors.
What the IMF wants from rich countries
Georgieva’s message to wealthy nations was direct: do more to help. That means fairer lending terms, faster debt relief for countries in trouble, and real investment in places the AI boom has skipped.
Without that help, she warned, the gap will keep growing — rich countries racing ahead on new technology while poor ones spend their budgets on interest payments and imported fuel.
What comes next
The next big tests for the world economy are close. The US Federal Reserve meets on October 27 and 28 to decide on interest rates, and fresh American inflation data follows in November. Both will shape borrowing costs worldwide.
For ordinary people in developing countries, the takeaway from Bangkok was simple. Prices are still rising faster than incomes. Debt is eating government budgets. And the AI revolution, for now, is mostly happening somewhere else.
