REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaks about the global economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington April 2, 2014.
In January, the IMF cut its global growth forecasts for the third time in less than a year, citing a sharp slowdown in Chinese trade and weak commodity prices - which it says are crushing Brazil and other emerging market economies - as reasons for the cut.
At the time, chief economist Maurice Obstfeld said that markets were overreacting to the woes surrounding the global economy. "It's not a stretch to suggest that (markets) may be reacting very strongly to rather small bits of evidence in an environment of volatility and risk aversion" he said.
Things have calmed down in the markets since that last forecast, but the global economic picture isn't hugely different, and the fund is expected to cut its forecasts once more on Tuesday afternoon.
The fund has cut global forecasts frequently in recent years, and despite these cuts, forecasts have often proved too optimistic. In February, a chart from the fund showed the sad state of global growth and perennially disappointed IMF forecasts. For instance, in 2011, it predicted that gross GDP growth globally would be 5%. At the last update, the forecast for this year was 3.4%.