The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will cut its global economic growth forecast for 2009 in its World Economic Outlook (WEO) due to be released Wednesday, the head of the IMF said.

In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt published on Sunday, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the global economic crisis was not over although there were some positive signs. The IMF forecasted that the global economy would recover in the first half of 2010.

The IMF predicated that the global economy would shrink by 0.5 percent to 1.0 percent in 2009, the first post-World War II downturn.

Strauss-Kahn also called for countries to look for inflation and deflation while fighting the economic crisis. According to the IMF chief, the threat of deflation was bigger than inflation in the short term.

Due to the global economic crisis, people's views of market economy had changed substantively, he said.

He added that market economy needed regulation, but this had been neglected in the past 10 years.

(Xinhua News Agency April 20, 2009)