Almaty. January 30. Kazakhstan Today - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts decrease in economic growth by 4.1 % in 2008. IMF report states, the agency reports referring to IMF site. According to IMF, after rapid growth in the third quarter of last year the rates of economic growth began to slow down due to financial crisis. IMF forecasts decrease in rates of economic growth from 4.9 % last year up to 4.1 % this year. In comparison with the forecast of IMF in October of 2007 growth went down by 0.3 points. The last data show that the rates of economic growth in the world have noticeably decreased for the last quarter of the last year due to the crisis in financial sector after a stronger than expected slow down of economic growth in the third quarter. The US economic growth was especially slowed down in the fourth quarter with slowing down of the activity in the sphere of manufacture, housing, employment and consumption. In the Western Europe rates of economic growth slowed down and index of confidence has fallen down. The forecasts of the highly developed economic systems have been significantly lowered. The forecasted growth of economic development in the USA this year has been lowered up to 1.5 % in comparison with 2.2 % of the last year. According to IMF forecasts, rate of growth of developing economies will be slowed down, decreasing from 7.8 % last year up to 6.9 % this year.