Weak capital flows to emerging economies in the downturn will hammer Eastern Europe in particular, the IMF said in releasing two chapters from its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO).
"The current recession is likely to be unusually long and severe and the recovery sluggish," the multilateral institution said.
The IMF offered no timeline for a recovery from the first global recession in six decades.
"There is some glimmer of hope that the stress is receding," said Stephan Danninger, an IMF economist.
But he said any improvement would merely reduce "extreme levels of stress" to still "very high levels" of economic stress.
The IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, echoed the grim prognostications.
"2009 will almost certainly be an awful year -- we expect global growth to enter deeply negative territory. This is a truly global crisis, and nobody is escaping," he said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
The IMF said its researchers looked