Waiting is not an option. You will now have to respond. As a company, the trick is to respond flexibly to situations that arise. This means that as an entrepreneur you have to explore which alternative solutions there are. Take the disrupted supply chain, for instance. Regular suppliers with whom you may have been doing business for years may be in the danger zone and at risk of disappearing. For example, because they're having difficulty paying their bills. How much risk does your company run as a result? Try to map that out. Allianz Trade has a good overview of the dummy creditworthiness of companies. The next question is how to reduce your company's exposure to supply risks. What alternatives are there? Which lines can you already cast for that?
We believe that the economic and political turmoil will continue beyond 2022. That is why we have sharply revised our forecasts downwards. We now assume a global economic growth of +3.3% (after +5.9% in 2021). For 2023, we forecast a further slowdown to +2.8%. The volume of world trade is also lower. Not +6%, but +4% in 2022.
One of the biggest dangers is runaway inflation. Prices are rising on all sides. This trend was already visible before the invasion but has only intensified since then. Globally, we are assuming 6% inflation for 2022. In some major economies, this will be much higher. For the United Kingdom, for example, we expect inflation to rise to +8.7% in the fourth quarter. Inflation has not been this high in the past forty years.
