What does the economy fear more than crises?

A few days ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its forecast for global economic growth in 2026 to 3.0%, down from 3.1% in its previous forecast. It justified this by citing ongoing geopolitical tensions, rising energy prices, and escalating uncertainty that continues to cast a shadow over the global economy.

This might seem like just a periodic review of growth forecasts, but in reality, it raises an economic question more important than the numbers themselves.

If global risks are increasing, why haven't economic decisions stopped? And why are companies still investing, relocating their factories, and pouring billions of dollars into new projects?

The answer doesn't start with growth rates, but with reading the report itself.

Despite lowering growth forecasts, the IMF did not speak of a halt in economic activity. Instead, it emphasized that the priority for policymakers is to:

"Restoring confidence, predictability, and sustainability remains a key policy priority."

This means that restoring confidence, enhancing predictability, and building more sustainable policies have become among the most important priorities for the next phase.

This phrase might seem ordinary, but in my opinion, it holds the key to understanding how the economy moves.

The economy does not wait for crises to disappear, because economic history has never known a crisis-free period. But it needs the surrounding environment to become more understandable, so that companies, investors, and governments can base their decisions on reasonable expectations, not on a state of complete ambiguity.

Here lies the difference between two concepts often used interchangeably: risk and uncertainty. Although the difference between them completely changes the way economic decisions are made.

Risk means that the challenges are known, even if they are costly. Energy prices might rise, new customs duties might be imposed, or interest rates might increase, but the effects of these variables can be estimated, and scenarios for dealing with them can be built.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, is a state where the rules of the game themselves become unclear. A company doesn't know how trade policies will change, where energy prices will go, or whether the supply chains it relies on today will still be able to meet its needs months from now. In this case, the problem is not the size of the potential loss, but the impossibility of estimating it.

For this reason, major companies have not stood idly by waiting for crises to end; instead, they have reformulated their strategies.

For example, Apple continued to diversify its production sites outside China, as part of a strategy aimed at enhancing the resilience of supply chains and reducing reliance on a single production hub. TSMC also continued to make huge investments in the United States, Japan, and Germany, even though the cost of production in these locations is higher than the cost of production in Taiwan.

Economically, these decisions do not seem logical if the only criterion for success is cost reduction.

But they become more logical if the goal is to build a greater ability to continue in a rapidly changing environment, even if that requires bearing higher costs.

And this, in part, explains what was stated in the IMF report.

Economic growth is not only linked to reduced risks, but also to the economy's ability to understand and adapt to them.

Therefore, economies do not wait for the end of crises to move, but rather begin to move when ambiguity turns into risks that can be estimated and managed.

For this reason, the most important question in every crisis is not:

When will it end?

But rather: When will its boundaries become clearer, so that individuals, companies, and governments can make their decisions with greater confidence?

The true value of reports from international economic institutions lies not in the growth figures they announce, but in the messages they carry about the nature of the next phase. The latest IMF report does not say that the world has become more stable, nor does it say that risks have disappeared. Instead, it draws attention to a more important truth: that restoring confidence and enhancing predictability have become essential conditions for continued growth.

Hence, the real challenge for policymakers is not to build an economy free of crises – a goal that has never been achieved at any stage of economic history – but rather to build an economy that can make decisions even amidst crises, because markets can coexist with risks, but they rarely can coexist with an unpredictable future.

The economy does not fear crises as much as it fears the absence of the ability to predict them.