Recovery in rich economies stutters: OECD data

PARIS – Growth in advanced economies slowed down slightly in 2013 from output in 2012, the OECD said on Wednesday.

These latest statistics on OECD-member countries bear out the struggling and fragile nature of recovery from recession in many countries which analysts have been underlining for several months.

“For 2013 as a whole, GDP (gross domestic product) rose by 1.3 percent in the OECD area, down from 1.5 percent in 2012,” the OECD, comprising 34 advanced democracies, said when it published data for the fourth quarter.

OECD growth flattened out at 6.0 percent in the last three months of 2013, the OECD said, with the United States and Britain being the most dynamic.

That figure was by comparison with output in the third quarter.

But on a 12-month comparison, fourth quarter to fourth quarter, the OECD area achieved growth of 2.2 percent.

On this 12-month basis, Italy was the only OECD country to show shrinking output.

The overall year-end 0.6-percent quarter-on-quarter growth in OECD members was the same as in the second and third quarters.

The data for Italy also highlights the pressures on Matteo Renzi as he tries to form a new government to carry though deep structural reforms to boost the economy.

Fourth-quarter data from OECD-member Canada was not yet available.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said that the US economy achieved growth of 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter from output in the third, and Britain 0.7 percent.

However, for both countries this meant that output had flagged slightly from output in the third quarter.

In Japan “growth was stable at 0.3 percent.”

For the eurozone, growth rose to 0.3 percent from 0.1 percent in the third quarter, and in the broader European Union by 0.4 percent from 0.3 percent.

In Germany, with the biggest economy in the EU, “growth accelerated slightly to 0.4 percent, compared with 0.3 percent in the third quarter”, the OECD said.

And France achieved a rather more marked increase from a zero figure in the third quarter to plus 0.3 percent in the last quarter.

Italian output increased in the fourth quarter, by 0.1 percent, for the first time since the third quarter of 2011.

However, when output was compared on a 12-month basis, OECD-area growth “accelerated significantly” to 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter, up from 1.5 percent in the third quarter.

The highest 12-month rate was turned in by Britain with 2.8 percent, followed by Japan and the United States with 2.7 percent.

“Italy was the only country reporting a contraction, minus 0.8 percent,” the OECD said in its monthly review. — Agence France-Presse