17/10/2014 - The President of the French Republic, Mr. François Hollande, met the Heads of five international economic organisations at the OECD on Friday 17th October to discuss the challenges facing the global economy.

Hosted by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, the heads of the International Monetary Fund (Managing Director Christine Lagarde), the World Bank Group (President Jim Yong Kim), the World Trade Organisation (Director-General Roberto Azevêdo) and the International Labour Organisation (Director-General Guy Ryder) met with the French President and his Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Economy and Employment and with his Secretary of State for Trade.   At a news conference ahead of the meeting, Mr Gurría spoke about the need for France to push ahead with its reform plans. He said “productivity gains have been modest since the mid-1990s and competitiveness has declined. The structural reforms underway, which have the strong support of the OECD, are indispensable.”

Photos: OECD/Michael Dean

Quoting a new OECD study, Mr. Gurría said that “full implementation of the reform programme could boost potential annual economic growth by one third, or 0.4 percentage point annually over ten years.”

President Hollande said the OECD’s estimates were “an encouragement for France to push ahead with its reforms.” Noting that France’s planned reforms were in the spirit of the OECD’s 2012 report on French competitiveness, he said “this is above all about creating economic activity” and said France intended “to move quickly in implementing these reforms”. “It’s the long-term results that will give credibility to these reforms.”

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said the world had not yet understood the potential risk to the global economy of the Ebola crisis. “We have still not yet got our heads around the global solidarity needed to solve this problem.”

 

» Read the OECD’s latest study on the impact of France’s structural reforms on growth.