The G-20 Agenda under the Russian Chairmanship

Institute of Worldwide Finance Convention: The G-20 Agenda underneath the Russian Chairmanship

A lot Greater than Progress!

Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-Normal

Moscow, 14 February 2013, 19:00

(As ready for supply)

Women and Gents:

It’s an honour for me to deal with you immediately and share some ideas on probably the most compelling coverage questions of our time: how can we alter the tempo and sample of progress to make it stronger, extra sustainable and extra inclusive?

We’re confronted immediately with a dilemma: as all of us search for stronger progress, we additionally recognise that progress alone doesn’t essentially translate into larger well-being for our residents. In different phrases, we’d like not solely stronger progress, but additionally ”higher” progress.

The three key questions that I wish to handle this night demand progressive solutions:

1. The place is progress going to come back from?
2. How sustainable will or not it’s?
3. Who’s going to profit from it?

Let me share with you our views on these essential questions.

The place is progress going to come back from over the subsequent a long time?

Rising-market economies and growing international locations have turn out to be the world’s primary engine of progress. Now we have documented this already in 2010, once we coined the time period “shifting wealth”, to explain the shift within the centre of gravity of the world economic system from North to South and from West to East.

The OECD Growth Centre estimated that within the Nineteen Nineties solely 12 growing international locations had been rising at the very least twice as quick because the OECD common in GDP per capita phrases. However the variety of such “quickly converging international locations” rose to 83 within the final decade. That is a powerful change!

Now we have additionally checked out main traits for the worldwide economic system over the subsequent 50 years. Our findings present that that the gaps in dwelling requirements between the world’s wealthy and poor international locations will proceed to shrink between now and 2060. Specifically, China and India will expertise greater than a seven-fold improve of their revenue per capita and their mixed GDP (in PPP phrases) will exceed that of the present OECD membership by that point.

Nonetheless, regardless of robust progress, the degrees of GDP per capita will proceed to range a terrific deal throughout international locations. In 2010, 109 international locations nonetheless had a GDP per capita decrease than 25% of that of the US. Even sustaining robust progress, solely 60 growing international locations will have the ability to double their revenue per capita within the subsequent 20 years.

What our evaluation exhibits is that many emerging-market and growing international locations are unable to endure the required structural transformations to maintain high-productivity progress. In different phrases, they’re confronted with the perils of the “middle-income lure”: most middle-income international locations face the rising competitors from low-wage international locations in world markets, however their companies should not aggressive sufficient to interrupt into these increased value-added segments of worldwide worth chains.

This can be a wake-up name for all of us: structural reforms are essential for progress not solely within the superior economies that are actually mired by the disaster, but additionally for emerging-market economies and growing international locations.

Burdensome regulation and heavy-handed State intervention, inadequate competitors in home markets, poor training methods, widespread informality within the labour market, these are all bottlenecks that discourage innovation, stop productiveness from rising sooner and constrain progress.

Structural reforms are a formidable device: they’re about setting up the insurance policies that may take away these obstacles and unleash alternatives for progress and growth. The pay-offs from structural reforms – carried out in superior and rising economies alike – are enormous. In accordance with our latest simulations, a complete, internally constant package deal of reforms might ship a rise in world GDP by 2.5% at the start of the subsequent decade in comparison with a baseline state of affairs of restricted reforms.[i]

Let me now handle the second query:

How sustainable will or not it’s?

We can not proceed to develop by creating havoc in our surroundings. Stronger progress is certainly obligatory, however we should cease our collision course with nature. The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050, paperwork the financial, social and environmental penalties of sustaining a progress mannequin that doesn’t protect our pure property. The outlook is fairly scary!

With out resolute motion, we present that world power demand can be 80% increased in 2050, with most of this improve coming from the emerging-market economies. Progress will nonetheless be principally – 85% – reliant on fossil fuel-based power, which might result in a 50% improve in greenhouse fuel emissions globally and trigger the worldwide common temperature to rise by 3 to six°C by the top of the century. The growing international locations, the place pure property characterize a median 26% of nationwide wealth, versus 2% in superior economies, have most to lose from a continued degradation of the atmosphere.[ii]

Making growth extra sustainable is sweet for the economic system. There isn’t a trade-off right here! Within the OECD Inexperienced Progress Technique we determine insurance policies that may make progress not solely much less carbon-intensive and extra sustainable, but additionally assist international locations unleash the potential of inexperienced applied sciences and innovation as a brand new driver of prosperity.

That is additionally true for the growing international locations: for example, Ethiopia is growing a particularly bold inexperienced progress technique and has requested the help of the OECD on this endeavour.

And now my third and final query:

Who’s going to profit from this progress?

The kind of progress that we have now been selling has been unfair. It has benefited a cheerful few. We now need to ensure that the advantages of progress are shared equitably.

Sturdy progress has led to a sustained discount of utmost poverty within the growing world. Nonetheless, even the place excessive poverty has been lowered, giant sectors of the populations stay weak, specifically these working within the casual sector, who could also be too rich to profit from focused programmes however too poor to afford formal safety methods. This “missing-middle” drawback impacts immediately a rising variety of emerging-market economies.

Whereas we targeted on progress, inequality stored rising, each within the developed and growing international locations. Our publication Divide We Stand exhibits that the hole between wealthy and poor has widened in most OECD international locations over the previous 30 years.[iii]

Inequality can be rising in China and India. In different rising economies, like Brazil, Chile and Mexico, inequalities have began falling, and that is excellent news, however at a really gradual tempo and disparities in these international locations are nonetheless enormous.

It’s so vital to make progress not solely stronger but additionally extra inclusive. It isn’t solely about equity, it is usually about economics! With the identical coverage instruments, we are able to promote inclusiveness and on the similar time improve progress. For instance, funding in training and abilities improves folks’s earnings capability and boosts productiveness for the economic system as an entire; deregulation to open protected sectors encourages funding that creates jobs and facilitates innovation.

These are three questions that may outline our future, the standard of lifetime of our kids and grand youngsters, the well being of our solely planet. To handle these challenges efficiently we’ll want two indispensable instruments: 1. New Approaches to Financial Challenges; and a pair of. Extra inclusive multilateral cooperation.

Let me conclude with just a few phrases on these two key parts:

First, we have to renovate our financial data and considering. Our conventional financial fashions haven’t solely did not keep away from the worst monetary disaster of our lifetime, in some circumstances they’ve produced it and fuelled it. This has value hundreds of thousands of individuals their houses, their jobs, and their monetary safety for all times. At OECD we consider that this disaster is a novel alternative to rethink our fashions and ideas.

We can not merely repackage instruments and recipes of the previous. We have to search for new drivers of progress and perceive higher the synergies and trade-offs that exist between totally different insurance policies to advertise progress, to protect the atmosphere, to make our societies fairer. The economics career bears appreciable accountability for this disaster and whether it is to be helpful once more “it should undergo an mental revolution”, as Anatole Kaletsky put it just lately.

For this reason on the OECD we have now launched our New Approaches to Financial Challenges (NAEC) initiative, by means of which we are attempting to revise, replace and enhance our financial considering and to attach the brand new concepts to policy-making. We already had two massive NAEC conferences and that is proving to be a most important and wholesome train. Because of this train the OECD financial recommendation is changing into broader, extra modest, and extra inclusive.

We additionally want to enhance our understanding of the complicated realities and particular circumstances of growing international locations. That is what we’re aiming to attain with our Technique on Growth: to combine the various views and realities of growing international locations into OECD evaluation and coverage recommendation, and mix extra successfully our experience in numerous areas to offer a extra coherent method to growth.

Second, we have to foster extra inclusive multilateral cooperation. The one manner we are able to handle the varied challenges that we face is thru efficient and inclusive multilateral cooperation. For this reason the G20 is so vital. Along with addressing the speedy and most urgent challenges posed by the disaster, it serves as a discussion board for policymakers to pursue the shared goal of robust, balanced and sustained progress.

Now we have already made important progress in enriching the G20 agenda and specializing in the long-term challenges dealing with the worldwide economic system. The Korean presidency put growth excessive on the agenda of the G20; the French achieved an bold Motion Plan on agriculture, meals safety and meals worth volatility. And the G20 has made progress within the realm of inexperienced progress underneath the management of the Mexican Presidency.

However there may be nonetheless an extended option to go. I hear generally that there’s a fatigue with the multilateral system and that the G20 is working out of steam. Let me be clear: we don’t share that view. The G20 has ample coverage area for motion and unrivalled political and financial firepower. But, actually, it nonetheless has to seek out the way in which to profit from its management to sort out deep structural points for the world economic system.

Women and Gents:

The disaster has given us a terrific alternative to create a greater world. We can not waste it! As we construct collectively the foundations of a greater world economic system let’s maintain these three questions in thoughts: The place is progress going to come back from? How sustainable will or not it’s? And who’s going to profit from this progress? Progress will not be a aim in itself, it’s a medium to enhance the standard of our lives, each in materials and religious excellence.

Let’s not neglect the phrases of the nice Dostoevsky: “man [..] like a chess-player, is within the course of of achieving his aim fairly than the aim itself.”[iv] Let’s show Dostoevsky proper and present that we, collectively, together with inside the G20, should not simply taken with progress as a aim, but additionally in progress as a course of with essential social and environmental ramifications for the way forward for our world.

Thanks very a lot.

ADVERTISEMENT