UNITED NATIONS Global economic growth is projected to be 2.3% in 2023, up 0.4 percentage points from a January forecast, and the prediction for 2024 has dropped 0.2 percentage points to 2.5%, according to a United Nations report released on Tuesday.

"Despite this uptick, the growth rate is still well below the average growth rate in the two decades before the pandemic of 3.1%," said the World Economic Situation and Prospects report issued by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The U.N. forecasts are less than the International Monetary Fund, which said earlier this year that global growth would fall to 2.9% in 2023 from 3.4% in 2022 and for 2024 would pick up slightly to 3.1%.

The U.N. said while the outlook for the United States, European Union and China had improved, "for many developing countries, growth prospects have deteriorated amid tightening credit conditions and rising costs of external financing".

"The least developed countries are forecast to grow by 4.1 per cent in 2023 and 5.2 per cent in 2024, far below the 7 per cent growth target set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," the U.N. report said.

It forecast U.S. growth of 1.1% in 2023 - up from 0.4% forecast in January; EU growth of 0.9% in 2023 - up from 0.2%; and Chinese growth of 5.3% - up from 4.8%.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Mark Heinrich)