The recovery is confirmed and after a historic recession in 2020, when the world economy contracted 3.5%, the OECD now expects a rise in GDP of 5.8%, “the highest rate since 1973,” said the economist head of the institution, Laurence Boone, at a press conference.
The OECD on Monday revised its world growth forecasts for 2021 (to 5.8%) and 2022 (to 4.4%), while warning of the risk of a relapse of the economy due to the persistence of “winds in against”.
Although it highlighted the strength of the recovery, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, made up of 38 countries representing 60% of world GDP, is concerned about the slowness of vaccination in poor countries and the nervousness of financial markets .
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The recovery is confirmed and after a historic recession in 2020, when the world economy contracted 3.5%, the OECD now expects a rise in GDP of 5.8%, “the highest rate since 1973,” said the economist head of the institution, Laurence Boone, at a press conference.
“If vaccination is accelerated and people spend the money they have saved, the growth could be even higher,” he said.
By 2022, a year in which most economies should return to their 2019 levels, the OECD predicts growth of 4.4%. In March, the organization forecast global growth of 5.6% this year and 4% next.
“Governments have administered nearly 2 billion doses of vaccines” and “never before in a crisis have we seen such rapid and effective public policies, both in terms of health and vaccine development or in monetary, fiscal or financial terms”, Laurence Boone notes in the report.
There are many positive signs, such as increased manufacturing output, a strong recovery in world merchandise trade, and a rebound in consumption after lockdowns.
“Headwinds”
“However, too many headwinds persist,” warns the OECD. Specifically, “while the vast majority of the world population is not vaccinated, we will all continue to be at the mercy of the appearance of new variants,” he points out.
New lockdowns would undermine “confidence” and many companies, “previously well protected but often burdened with high debt, could go bankrupt,” Boone warned.
“There is very little international cooperation and the result is that the prospects for recovery are too uneven,” lamented the Secretary General of the OECD, the Mexican Ángel Gurría, who held his last press conference.
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Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsUnder his tenure, the international organization, which had been limited to reporting for a long time, gained influence, becoming a multilateral negotiating body, especially in the area of taxation.
The Paris-based organization says the recovery is fragile and “uneven” and expects growth of 8.5% in China and 6.9% in the United States, two countries that have already returned to their pre-pandemic levels , but only 2.6% in Japan and 3.3% in Germany.
In Latin America, the institution expects Brazil to grow 3.7% in 2021, Mexico 5.0%, Argentina 6.1%, Chile 6.7% and Colombia 7.6%. For its part, Spain should register a growth of 5.9% this year.
“The OECD will continue to strongly advocate a multilateral approach to ending the pandemic around the world,” added Gurría, who has been in office for 15 years.
Another risk identified by the OECD is the nervousness of the financial markets, which are alarmed by the inflationary spikes and which, according to the international organization, are only a temporary phenomenon linked to the economic recovery.
“We believe that inflation should subside in 2022,” said Boone, who acknowledged that he was concerned “the volatility of financial markets, which would have consequences for both developed and emerging economies, by causing capital flight.”
