The EIU’s Robin Bew was interviewed on April 1 about his current expectations for the world economy.  He finds little to indicate a quick turn around. Here are a few excerpts from the transcript (we added the emphasis).

Regarding a growth forecast and the time until world recovery begins:

“It became clear that the pace of economic decline actually accelerated during the fourth quarter and the monthly data that we’ve been getting since then (at the moment we have figures for January and some numbers for February) suggests that there was no slackening in that pace of decline. In fact, if anything, it might have got even worse. So we’re now looking at a situation where output is declining very rapidly in a number of major markets – America, as you said the eurozone, also Japan.

So a very, very significant negative outcome. And even if you did see a recovery later on this year, and we think that’s highly unlikely, you would still end up with a terrible number for the year as a whole. In reality, I think we’re not looking at a recovery until well into 2010 or maybe even 2011.”

Regarding world trade:

“Our forecast at the moment for world trade volumes is that they will shrink by about 6 per cent this year, something like that. Now in cash terms, it’s a whole lot worse. If you look at a market like China, which is one of the world’s biggest trading powers, trade there, cash value of their exports is off 20 per cent. Some markets (Japan for example) off 50 per cent. So ‘collapse’ is not too strong a word.“

Regarding the banks and lending:

“Obviously many banks have been nationalised, the ones that haven’t are still taking a lot of money from the governments and they’re desperately trying to repair their balance sheets, so it is going to be very unlikely to start extending credit until that balance sheet repair is done and we’re a long way off that.

But I also think it is important to remember that actually demand for many types of credit has also collapsed.”

Regarding oil prices:

“Well, we’re in an environment now where demand is not rising very quickly at all. In fact, in many markets it is falling and that’s a recipe for oil prices to stay relatively depressed.”

By way of summary:

“Our expectation is by the time you get to the end of this year the best you can say is that perhaps we’ve stopped falling. But in terms of actually getting some growth, even very modest growth, I think you’re looking into 2010 for that and in terms of the sorts of growth which is going to make a difference to how you and I actually feel, I think you’re looking probably to the end of 2010″

Obviously, the Economist’s forecast differs sharply from those expecting a V shaped recovery in the second half of 2009.