The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Thursday painted a bleak picture of slow growth and large current account imbalances in the global economy and urged the world's three major economic centers to adopt fiscal and monetary policies to put growth back on course and create more jobs.
After two days of closed-door discussions here, the economic ministers from the 30 OECD member countries lamented the sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy, gave little prospect of a quick turnaround in the flagging Japanese economy and predicted that growth in Europe will slow this year.
The ministers, however, said they see a brighter side in the economic landscape after a year in which the growth rate in the OECD member countries has slowed by half, from 4 percent a year ago to around 2 percent this year.
"The foundations are in place for a return to stronger growth and inflation is expected to remain low," they said in a final communique.