OECD echoes market fears on global outlook for 2016

The OECD has chopped its growth outlook, and in a hard-hitting report echoed many of the worries of financial markets about the health of the global economy.

The Paris-based club regularly issues forecasts for the world’s major trading nations and blocs. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is now markedly more downbeat than its previous report issued in November.

It said yesterday that the efforts taken by central banks around the world — which in the case of Sweden and Japan have included introducing negative interest rates to encourage commercial banks to lend — “cannot work alone” to spur growth.