In a new forecast Tuesday, the World Bank projected another year of slow global growth as the U.S. budget showdown joins Europe’s recession to restrain the world economy. The year ahead will be “risky,” World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. But the relative calm in financial markets could provide an opportunity for emerging economies to boost growth without being dragged down by advanced economies, said Basu, who joined the bank last fall. Here are excerpts of the conversation:

This still looks like a fairly glum outlook for the global economy. What’s wrong?

We have come already into a very interesting year – though interesting for analysts does not mean it will bode well for people who live through the year. Downside risks have gone down. Financial markets are calmer. The indicators show that the concerns we had a year ago have diminished. But on the real side, it doesn’t translate into growth. In high-income countries, growth in 2012 was 1.3% and this year will be 1.3%. For developing countries, our forecast is better. It’s a bit of a good sign that emerging economies – the big ones – are expecting some revival. This could well turn out to be a year in which, in the long sweep of retrospective viewing, the baton gets passed from the industrial countries being growth leaders to emerging countries – China, India, Brazil – being the growth leaders.

We seem to have a protracted divide between recoveries in financial markets and the real economy. Does that worry you?

It’s certainly something we need to keep a very close watch on. Financial markets have calmed. But financial markets usually calm down when someone stands there and says, ‘We won’t allow a sudden crisis.’ In the end, financial markets feed on the real economy if they want returns. You can keep markets calm for one or two years, but if this is not backed up with real growth you could get another round of financial risks coming in.