The world economy has been wallowing in the doldrums for six months and the US has even slipped backwards to trail the euro zone, the OECD said today.
The Japanese economy contracted by 0.5 per cent in the third quarter after a decline of 1.2 per cent in the second quarter and growth of 1.0 per cent in the fourth quarter.
Two quarters in a row of negative growth are considered by most economists to mark a recession. On a 12-month basis, the Japanese economy showed a fall of 0.5 per cent in the third quarter.
At the same time the ECB president Mr Wim Duisenberg gave a blunt view in Brussels of the euro-zone economy today saying that growth was much lower than expected.
The OECD, grouping 30 leading industrialised economies, issued preliminary estimates for the third quarter showing that over all its members had registered zero growth in the third quarter from the second-quarter performance, making six months of flat activity.
On November 30th, the US Commerce Department said that US gross domestic product shrank by 1.1 per cent in the third quarter, the biggest drop in a decade.
The OECD said that on a 12-month basis, OECD area economies showed growth of 0.8 per cent in the third quarter from the same period one year earlier.
The OECD also said that of the G7 leading industrialised countries, four had shown a contraction of their economies in the third quarter from the second-quarter data. These were Canada, with a decline of 0.2 per cent, Germany 0.1 per cent, Japan 0.5 per cent and the United States 0.3 per cent.
Of the other three G7 countries, France achieved third-quarter growth of 0.5 per cent, Britain 0.5 per cent and Italy 0.2 per cent.
AFP