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The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that 2023 will be a more challenging year for the global economy than 2022.

"For most of the world economy, this is going to be a tough year, tougher than the year we leave behind," Georgieva said in an interview with CBS News' "Face the Nation" that aired Sunday. "Why? Because the three big economies — US, EU, China — are all slowing down simultaneously."

She added: "Even countries that are not in recession, it would feel like recession for hundreds of millions of people."

Georgieva told Face the Nation that the US economy was the "most resilient" and could dodge recession because its labor market was robust. However, this could mean interest rates remain higher in order to tame inflation, she said.

China has recently taken steps to relax its zero-COVID policy, but this will "bushfire" infections nationwide "for three, four, five, six months," Georgieva told Face the Nation.

Half of the European Union will be in recession in 2023 because the Ukraine war has driven up energy and food prices, she said.

The situation for emerging markets was even more dire, she said, "because on top of everything else, they get hit by high interest rates and by the appreciation of the dollar. For those economies that have high level of that, this is a devastation."

The IMF has forecast that global growth will decline to 2.7% or less in 2023, compared with 6% in 2021 and 3.2% in 2022.