A security officer walks by an International Monetary Fund (IMF) banner during the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., April 18. AP-Yonhap

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised up its 2024 economic growth outlook for Korea to 2.5 percent, Tuesday, up from a previous forecast of 2.3 percent announced in April.

The IMF's updated outlook follows a string of upward revisions to the projected growth of Asia's fourth-largest economy, which has been enjoying robust exports.

Both the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) hiked their growth projections to 2.6 percent from 2.2 percent.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) increased its growth estimate to 2.5 percent from 2.1 percent.

In particular, the revised outlook for Korea was relatively high among the world's major economies, according to the IMF report.

The U.S.-headquartered IMF did not explain why it hiked the forecast for Korea.

It instead said the global economy is expected to show modest growth, on the back of a surge in exports from Asia and a recovery in international trade.

The IMF correspondingly kept the growth projection for the world economy steady at 3.2 percent.

It went on to explain that both upward and downward factors on global economic growth remain in balance.

Among the upward factors it listed were increased productivity over successful governance and corporate restructuring and strengthened multilateral cooperation for trade expansion.

Concerning downward factors, the IMF picked geopolitical risk-driven inflation and costly borrowing rates as well as fiscal deficits and growing national debt.

The IMF recommended central banks to refrain from cutting down benchmark interest rates too early while inflationary risks persist.

It also recommended carrying out rate cuts gradually based on clear-cut data to ensure that consumer prices remain stable.

Meanwhile, the economic growth outlook for advanced economies remained steady at 1.7 percent, unchanged from previous estimates. In contrast, the forecast for emerging economies was revised upward to 4.3 percent from 4.2 percent.

The forecast for the United States slid by 0.1 percentage point to 2.6 percent. The projection for the eurozone inched up by 0.1 percentage point to 0.9 percent.

China saw its 2024 growth outlook raised by 0.4 percentage point to 5 percent.

The United Kingdom and France also saw increases of 0.2 percentage point to 0.7 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Germany and Italy remained unchanged at 0.2 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.

The growth projection for Japan slid by 0.2 percentage point to 0.7 percent. The growth estimate for Spain went up 0.5 percentage point to 2.4 percent and Canada gained 0.1 percentage point to 1.3 percent.

The 2025 growth forecast for Korea slid to 2.2 percent from 2.3 percent, while the global economy was estimated to expand 3.3 percent, up from a previous projection of 3.2 percent.