The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has said that the global economic recovery is weakening as government policies have failed to restore confidence. It added that the risk of further deterioration in the economic outlook was considerable and had increased. The IMF downgraded its estimate for global growth in 2013 to 3.6 per cent from the 3.9 per cent it forecast in July. One of the biggest downgrades was to the UK economy, which the IMF expects to shrink by 0.4 per cent this year.