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ВВС NEWS, Wednesday, 26 November, 2003

What is the OECD for?

For the man in the street, OECD is just another of those irritat­ing sets of initials that the world seems so full of these days. Readers of the business pages may know, at least, that those initials stand for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Rather than lending money with menaces, like the International Monetary Fund, or chewing over the woes of the rich world, like the G8, the OECD sees its role as the dissemination of free-market ideas and sound regulatory policies.

The OECD does not concern itself with the grand themes of global mac­roeconomics, instead pondering unglamorous but worthy subjects such as ag­ricultural reform in China, or educational development in Denmark. Some­one has to do this sort of thing, presumably. But there seems to be a growing body of opinion that the OECD may not be the right agency to do it.

The OECD was born in the early Cold War, as a means of distributing American cash and economic wisdom to war-weary Europe. As Europe boomed, the OECD seemed to have a coherent identity as the rich countries' club. Now, though, that identity is looking dangerously blurred. The OECD has admitted as members a host of distinctly unrich countries — including Poland, Mexico and Turkey. «I think it is very clear that we have a greater role now than at any time in the past 30 or 40 years,» says Mr Johnston. «What we do is unique, and I can't see that any other agency — the United Nations, for example — could do it instead.»

Behind closed doors at this week's meetings, OECD ministers are starting to discuss what people call the «modalities» of allowing in more members — Russia, for instance, which has submitted a formal membership application. This may take time: members acknowledge that achieving consensus among 30 fairly like-minded countries is hard enough — expanding membership to tough customers like the Russians or Chinese could gum up the decision­making machinery completely. But Mr Johnston says the mere fact that coun­tries are keen to sign up is positive.

Global economic growth will pick up over the next two years helped by tax and interest rate cuts, the OECD said. The strongest recovery will be in the US, while the rebound in Europe and Japan will be slower and less steep. Europe's largest economies, however, are told they will have to continue re­forming, or be more susceptible to recession in coming years.

Jean-Philippe Cotis, chief economist, said that «after a drawn-out period of fits and starts, a palpable recovery has finally taken hold». «The strong mo-

mentum already achieved in Asia, North America and the United Kingdom provides ample evidence of the renewed strength of the world economy». That will come as a relief to many Western economies, following three years of sputtering growth and slumping stock markets.

To kickstart the world's largest economy US President George W Bush cut taxes, while the country's central bank, the Federal Reserve, set interest rates at the lowest levels in almost half a century. Europe's largest economies and cen­tral bank were criticised by many analysts and business leaders for being slow to react. They seern however, to have weathered the storm, with countries includ­ing Germany emerging from recession and promising tax relief of their own.

The OECD has concerns about debt levels among private individuals in the US, the UK and Australia and among businesses in continental Europe. Large deficits in the US government budget and in its trade with the rest of the world are a possible source of instability in the currency markets. A sudden weakening of the dollar would make Europe less competitive and could, the OECD warns, stifle a fledgling recovery.

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