“The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecasts global economic growth will accelerate in 2014 with both the U.S. and Japan continuing to outpace the euro area.
“The global economy is moving forward and it is doing so at multiple speeds,” OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan said today in the Paris-based organization’s semi-annual Economic Outlook. Differing monetary and fiscal choices across the major developed economies are driving regional divergence with “each path carrying its own mix of risks,” he said.
Global central banks are continuing to try to bolster their economies, with the Federal Reserve buying $85 billion of debt a month and the Bank of Japan unveiling unprecedented stimulus last month. In the euro region, where the European Central Bank cut its benchmark rate to a record low this month, the OECD said “more can be done through further non-conventional measures.”
The OECD sees U.S. gross domestic product rising 1.9 percent this year and 2.8 percent in 2014, while Japan’s will increase 1.6 percent and 1.4 percent. The euro-area economy will shrink 0.6 percent this year before expanding 1.1 percent next, according to the report.
In a separate release today, German unemployment rose more than economists forecast in May as the euro-region debt crisis and a long winter took their toll on Europe’s largest economy. The number of people out of work climbed 21,000 to 2.96 million. Economists predicted an increase of 5,000, according to the median of 35 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.
