It kept its 2018 global growth forecast unchanged at 3.6 percent.
"Remember we are still living with the legacy from the global financial crisis in the U.S.", the IMF's division chief for the Asia and Pacific department, Luis Enrique Breuer, said in Washington on Wednesday.
Obstfeld said: "Momentum in the global economy has been building since the middle of a year ago".
The IMF now sees Hungary's current account surplus narrowing to 3.7% of GDP in 2017, rather than to 4.6%, and projects less squeeze next year, to 3.0% instead of 1.4% of GDP.
Inflation, however, is entering a positive course, reaching 1.5% in 2017 and 1.4% in 2018.
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The IMF's estimate for worldwide economic growth is 3.5 per cent for this year and 3.6 per cent for 2018, up from 3.1 per cent last year. Commodity prices, particularly crude oil, which plummeted to historic lows in the first few months of 2016, seem to be on the rebound, according to the report. World growth is expected to rise from 3.1 percent in 2016 to 3.5 percent in 2017 and 3.6 percent in 2018.
There are still risks, however, against the world economy, such as low productivity growth, high income inequality, inward-looking policies in advanced economies, and the U.S.'s Federal Reserve raising rates faster than expected.
For 2018, the International Monetary Fund expects Portuguese economic growth to slow to 1.5%, which is also less optimistic than the Portuguese government's projection of 1.9% of GDP.
Turning to matters global, the Washington-based institution's new World Economic Outlook report expects growth of 3.5% overall this year. Kuwait's economy, in contrast, is forecast to shrink by 0.2 percent. The IMF says significant downside risks continue to cloud the medium-term outlook and one salient threat is a turn toward protectionism which might lead to trade warfare. "Emerging market and developing economies... now account for more than 75 percent of global growth in output and consumption, nearly double the share of just two decades ago".
The IMF lifted Japan's 2017 growth projection by 0.4 percentage point from January, to 1.2 per cent, while the eurozone and China both saw a 0.1 percentage point growth forecast increase to 1.7 per cent and 6.6 per cent, respectively.
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