Bilateral meetings with OECD experts and OECD member country delegations (upon request) 

Information session on OECD iLibrary - Room CC20
Giulia Buson, Marketing Specialist OECD iLibrary

Working session: Leveraging the Work of Independent Fiscal Institutions for Legislative Scrutiny - Room CC9
Rolf Alter, Director, Public Governance and Territorial Development, OECD
Discussants: Ints Dalderis, Member of Parliament, Latvia; Remo Holsmer, Member of Parliament, Estonia; Fredrik Olovsson, Member of Parliament, Sweden

Independent fiscal institutions, such as parliamentary budget offices and fiscal councils, serve to promote sound fiscal policy and sustainable public finances. Today these institutions are considered among the most important innovations in the emerging architecture of public financial management. This session used OECD case studies to show how independent fiscal institutions can empower legislatures, raising the quality of public debate on fiscal policy and holding governments to account for fiscal policy choices. During the session, parliamentarians had the first view of our new database on independent fiscal institutions, providing a wealth of information on options for how these institutions are designed and operate across the OECD.

Anthony Gooch, Director, Directorate for Public Affairs and Communications, OECD

Arrival and coffee

Making globalisation work. A conversation with 
Angel Gurría, Secretary-General, OECD

Coffee break

Exiting from the low growth trap: Investment
Catherine Mann, Chief Economist, G20 Finance Deputy and Special Counsellor to the Secretary-General, OECD
Discussant: Giampaolo Galli, Member of Parliament, Italy

The global economy remains in a low-growth trap with world GDP stuck in 2016 at around 3%, well-below the long-run average for the fifth consecutive year.  Disappointing growth outcomes have led to weak consumption and investment, sustaining a vicious cycle of poor productivity improvements and further growth disappointments. Weak investment accounts for a large share of this poor productivity performance with capital spending in the OECD barely above the pre-crisis peak and well below the trajectory of past recoveries. Most strikingly, investment has not responded to the exceptionally low interest rates brought about by monetary policy.

Increases in investment are needed to push economies onto a higher growth path and this calls for decisive policy actions. During this presentation, OECD’s Chief Economist shared insights into how fiscal initiatives and structural reforms can lead to higher growth without compromising debt sustainability.

Exiting from the low growth trap: Trade
Ken Ash, Director, Trade and Agriculture, OECD
Discussant: Hans Rothenberg, Member of Parliament, Sweden

Trade is facing strong headwinds today from a deeply sceptical public, with large parts of society feeling that globalisation is undermining, rather than underpinning, their livelihood. We need to recognise that trade can only work for everyone if governments apply the full panoply of national and international policies to ensure that more people benefit from the freer and fairer movement of information, ideas, technological innovations, as well as goods, services, capital and people, across borders. Trade and investment are important sources of productivity gains and essential ingredients in the global value chains that underpin our interconnected economies.
 
In this presentation, the OECD’s Director for Trade and Agriculture highlighted how trade policy, as one element of a wider economic policy agenda, can help countries exit the low-growth trap.

The Productivity-Inclusiveness Nexus
Gabriela Ramos, Chief of Staff, G20 Sherpa and Special Counsellor to the Secretary-General, OECD 
Discussants: Liam Byrne, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom; Enrique Calvet Chambon, Member of the European Parliament, Spain

Among the myriad challenges facing our economies, few pose greater obstacles to better economic performance than the productivity slowdown and the rise in inequalities. Are they influencing each other? OECD work on the productivity-inclusiveness nexus, presented at the 2016 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting, sets out what we know about the interactions between productivity and inclusiveness, identifies knowledge gaps, and charts win-win policies that boost productivity and tackle inequality.

Despite advances in business and technological transformations, we can no longer assume that they will automatically lead to better economic performance and stronger productivity growth. And there is no guarantee that the benefits of higher levels of growth, or higher levels of productivity in certain sectors, will be shared across the population as a whole. This session explored how policy makers can adopt a broader, more inclusive approach to productivity growth – one that considers how to expand the productive assets of an economy by investing in individuals’ skills and providing an environment where enterprises have a fair chance to succeed, including in lagging regions, generating strong and sustainable growth and opportunities for all.

The 2030 Agenda: Financing for sustainable development
Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Chair, Development Assistance Committee, OECD

The world has come a long way: poverty is three times lower than in 1970 and economic prosperity is on the rise. But there is still much to be done, in particular in focussing on the lowest income countries, and ensuring that financing and international efforts are aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The system of Official Development Assistance (ODA) offers a consistent basis for donors to provide support and is a key part of the international development architecture, measuring the financial efforts of participating nations and working towards an overall aim of consistent contributions. The OECD collates the statistics and members’ activities are reviewed by their peers on a periodic basis, providing accountability and ensuring efforts are well placed.

In a world of ever constrained budgets, nations must continue to provide the finance to back up their commitments to delivering on the SDGs. But the financing must be sustainable and must seek to maximise the opportunities in both the public and private sectors. This presentation focused on how the Development Assistance Committee and ODA systems are reforming to ensure they remain relevant and fit for purpose in this ever-changing development landscape.

The Geography of Productivity and Well-being: Sources of Discontent?
Rolf Alter, Director, Public Governance and Territorial Development, OECD

Recent events have highlighted a growing discontent with the political establishment’s ability to address citizen needs, in some cases following a geographical pattern within countries. Could we have seen it coming?

For several years, the OECD has been producing work on regions and cities that can contribute to this debate. The work has highlighted the disparities within and across regions on classic indicators such as GDP per capita, but also a wider range of indicators on different elements of well-being that matter for people, such as access to jobs, housing and good health. This presentation showed why we need to look beyond national averages to understand this geography of performance. People’s perception of their life conditions also matters. The more policy makers and citizens can see and monitor performance at the level that counts, the regional and local level, the easier it will be for policy to address their concerns. OECD indicators and policy research on regional, urban and rural development is therefore part of the toolkit available to countries in their efforts to be more responsive to their electorate.

Reception - George Marshall Room

PISA 2015
Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General, OECD
Discussant: Heli Järvinen, Member of Parliament, Finland; Koen Daniëls, Member of the Flemish Parliament, Belgium

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. Results from PISA allow policy makers around the world to set policy targets against measurable goals achieved by other education systems, and learn from policies and practices applied elsewhere. Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills presented an overview of the PISA 2015 results for science and students’ attitudes towards learning science, including their expectations of working in science-related careers. The presentation also examined how performance and equity have evolved across PISA-participating countries and economies, and provided insights on education policies that can help to foster improvements in equity and outcomes.

The next generation of health system reforms
Mark Pearson, Deputy Director, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, OECD
Discussant: Peter Koliba, Member of Parliament, Czech Republic

For too long, health system reforms have been built around the needs of hospitals and clinicians, rather than patients. How can we turn this around? Guided by the mandate of over thirty Ministers of Health meeting at the OECD last month, the OECD is spear-heading an international collaboration to benchmark health system performance, based on whether patients themselves say that health care has benefitted them, and to what extent.

Better measuring value, however, won’t take us very far unless we also control spending and tackle waste. Drug prices are escalating and high prices do not always come with high benefits. At the same time, up to a fifth of health system spending and activities does not contribute to improving outcomes. This session discussed how governments could re-shape the pharma industry to better respond to citizens’ needs, and tackle waste in the delivery of health care.

The role of International Organisations in fostering better rules of globalisation
Rolf Alter, Director, Public Governance and Territorial Development, OECD

Effective international rules and standards have proven to be beneficial for a sustainable world economy and shared well-being. International organisations play a key role in developing such rules and understanding how they operate and engage with stakeholders is important for ensuring their effectiveness.
 
To shed light on international standard setting, this presentation illustrated recent OECD work collecting, comparing and assessing the practices of 50 international organisations on their governance arrangements, operational modalities, use of quality management disciplines and co-operation efforts. Looking at different types of organisations, our work identifies avenues for making their legal and policy instruments more effective, inclusive and relevant, in an effort to address the current discontent with globalisation arising from fragmented rules of the game. Recognising the challenges of monitoring and evaluating the implementation and impact of international standards and guidelines, transparency, flexibility, focus and co-operation are vital to ensuring complementarity.

1st meeting of the Parliamentary Group on Integrity & Transparency
Chair: Carol Guthrie, Head of Public Affairs and Media, OECD 
Janos Bertok, Head, Public Sector Integrity, Public Governance and Territorial Development, OECD
Stav Shaffir, Member of Parliament, Israel

Read the background note on achieving transparent government