OECD countries pledge growth-friendly debt control

Countries in the Organisation for Ecomomic Co-operation and Development on Friday committed to cutting deficits without hurting growth in a closing statement at their annual ministers' meeting, in Paris. Looking at Africa, the OECD told RFI the continent's biggest threat was the collapse of commodity prices.

Reuters

The ministers of the 35-nation OECD said in a statement it was "important to develop credible and transparent medium-term fiscal consolidation plans ... We will implement them in ways that do not jeopardise growth".

In its world economic report, the OECD said the world is recovering robustly from the global downturn but warned that threats remain from eurozone debt and a risk of overheating in emerging economies.

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Interview: Henri-Bernard Solignac Lecomte, OECD

Billie O'Kadameri

Focusing on Africa, the OECD told RFI the direct effect of the global financial crisis was relatively small there, because of the low degree of integration of African banks with international financial markets, and because of strict capital market regulations.

The Paris-based organisations said in its just released African Economic Outlook that among the key problem Africa faced, was the collapse of commodity prices and the fall of export volumes.

In an interview at RFI's studios, the OECD’s head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Henri-Bernard Solignac Lecomte, said that the continent had been barely hit by the global financial crisis.

“We have had, in the past years, sustained periods of growth at about 6 per cent on average for the continent, which is way above what the continent has been able to do in the 90s or the 80s," Solignac Lecomte said.

"And then suddenly, with the slowdown or the recession of OECD economies, the impact of the continent has been to bring that period of sustained growth to a halt.

"Africa on the whole is still fairly resilient, because in spite of the crisis it has kept growing ... This year we expect it to go as far as 4.5 per cent, and even more than 5 per cent in 2011."

The OECD, which is due to hold its tenth International Forum on Africa in Paris in the coming days, said another factor that affected Africa slightly was the decline of workers' remittances.