PARIS (AFP) – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) slightly raised its world economic growth forecast for 2024 yesterday but called for higher property and environmental taxes to combat soaring debt in many countries.
In its economic oulook report titled Turning the Corner, the Paris-based organisation said global gross domestic product would expand by 3.2 per cent, compared to 3.1 per cent in its previous forecast.
“Global output growth has remained resilient and inflation has continued to moderate,” the OECD and Development said in the twice-yearly report.
Central banks in the United States (US) and Europe have started to cut interest rates as inflation, which soared after the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is finally cooling.
The OECD cited “relatively robust” growth in the US, Brazil, Britain, India and Indonesia. It raised Russia’s GDP growth forecast by 1.1 percentage points to 3.7 per cent.
But the OECD slightly lowered the outlook for Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to 0.1 per cent growth and said Japan’s GDP would shrink by 0.1 per cent. Argentina’s economy would have a deeper contraction of four per cent.