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OECD warns of low economic growth globally

Problems on infrastructure shortages, slowing trade in focus at G20 meeting.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, on Friday warned declining global productivity will usher in a new and extended era of low growth unless there are major structural reforms.

Its new “Going for Growth” report identifies infrastructure shortages and slowing trade activity as key problems — issues that will be in focus at the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Sydney this weekend.

Angel Gurria, right, presenting a policy reforms booklet to Joe Hockey during the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Sydney on Friday. — AP

“The widespread deceleration in productivity since the [global financial] crisis could presage the beginning of a new low-growth era,” the OECD said.

“The global economy’s momentum remains sluggish, heightening concerns that there has been a structural downshift in growth rates compared with pre-crisis levels.

“These concerns, already prevalent among advanced OECD countries for some time, now encompass emerging-market economies and are fuelled also by high unemployment and falling labour force participation in many countries.”

OECD chief Angel Gurria said the report came at a time of transition for the global economy, when “we see the recovery strengthening in advanced economies, albeit at different speeds, while growth in emerging economies is slowing”.

“Normally it’s the other way around,” Gurria told reporters in Sydney, noting that key drivers of productivity growth such as credit, investment and trade, had been “very very sluggish, in some cases unusually weak since the crisis”.

Growth was muted, unemployment and economic inequality was rising and the OECD chief said there had been a “big drop in the confidence, in the trust in all the institutions we’ve built up over 50 to 100 years”.

With traditional stimulatory instruments such as fiscal and monetary policy nearing or at their limit, Gurria said “ambitious” structural reform agendas needed to be pursued “with determination by all G20 countries”.

“Stronger demand is indeed fundamental but by no means sufficient to avoid the low-growth trap,” he said.

Gurria said the OECD report could be seen as a glass half-full or half-empty assessment.

On the positive side, he said the speed of reform remained “on average well above the pace observed before the crisis.”

Detracting from this, however, momentum had slowed “visibly” in the past two years and reforms were “fragmented, piecemeal, incremental and unlikely to fully address the underlying challenges.”

The G20 has sessions on the global economy and growth strategies, both of which have been prioritised by summit chair Australia with Treasurer Joe Hockey.