Australia has the strongest economy in the developed world and it is expected to outperform all comers for at least the next two years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

 
The IMF - which issued its World Economic Outlook in Washington overnight - said it expected the Australian economy to expand by 3 per cent this year as fiscal tensions from Europe and the United States continue to ease.

The body stated that after a major setback last year with the Eurozone crisis, the global prospect of far more stable financial conditions was gradually improving.

The update said that it expects , noting we live in a region where exposure to troubled European banks was less than for other parts of the world.

But it also warned that Australia was exposed to risk if economic conditions in the Middle East caused another oil price spike.

The organisation revised up its global growth forecasts, with the global economy expected to grow by 3.5 per cent in 2012, up from 3.3 per cent in the January update.

A forecast of global growth of 4.1 per cent in 2013 has also been revised up from 3.9 per cent.

Global growth continues to be underpinned by solid growth in Asia, the report said.

China's economy was expected to grow 8.2 per cent in 2012 and 8.8 per cent in 2013, while India was expected to grow 6.9 per cent in 2012 and 7.3 per cent in 2013. These forecasts were broadly unchanged from the IMF's January update.




The government has hit out at Opposition leader Tony Abbott for ''getting it wrong'' on the IMF growth forecasts.

During a morning doorstop, Mr Abbott said the IMF report showed the local economy was ''underperforming'', as they had downgraded the economic growth forecast.

''It forecasts 3 per cent for the current financial year and it looks like we are going to get 2 per cent,'' Mr Abbott said.

''This is an underperforming economy and it's underperforming because of the poor economic management of the current government.''

But Mr Abbott's assertion was not correct, according to a spokesman for the Treasurer, who said the growth forecast of 3 per cent in 2012 had been the same since the start of the year.

, with the Western world's leading think tank saying the strategy will save up to 200,000 jobs.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's annual employment outlook says Australia will be one of the Western countries to suffer least in the global financial crisis.

Its data shows Australia spends just 0.01 per cent of GDP on training its unemployed - the equal lowest in the OECD along with Mexico and the Czech and Slovak republics.

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It estimates Australia's stimulus has been the third largest in the Western world at 5.4 per cent of GDP, exceeded only by Korea (6.1) and the US (5.7).

''Even though many countries moved quickly to enact large fiscal stimulus packages, these packages generally have not had a strong effect in cushioning the initial decline in employment caused by the crisis, although ,'' it says.