Market expectations running ahead of global economic prospects: OECD

Tokyo

BUSINESS confidence and financial markets may be running ahead of developments in the global real economy in assuming continued improvement in growth, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned on Wednesday in a report which dampened a recent surge of optimism.

"The mood in the global economy has brightened during the last year", the Paris-based organisation said in its latest bi-annual Economic Outlook. "Confidence indicators, industrial production, headline measures of employment, and cross-border trade flows have improved in most economies."

Even so, the OECD report said that global growth is expected to pick up "only modestly" this year to 3.5 per cent from 3 per cent in 2016 and fractionally to 3.6 per cent i…