Widespread corruption continues to be a major challenge for Kyrgyzstan’s development, despite efforts to streamline its anti-corruption policy and strengthen the institutional framework since 2012.

A high-level Working Group mission will visit Buenos Aires on 26-27 April 2016 and meet senior Argentine government officials.

A high-level Working Group mission will visit Tokyo on 29-30 June 2016 and meet senior Japanese government officials.

La inversión pública en Colombia ha aumentado sustancialmente en los últimos años hasta alcanzar casi el 4% del PIB, una cifra superior a la media OCDE de 3.2%. Sin embargo, según indica un nuevo informe de la OCDE, para hacer frente a la brecha en infraestructuras y para superar las desigualdades territoriales será necesario que el país mantenga y amplíe sus esfuerzos en materia de inversión.

Abidjan, 27-28 October 2016 - This event focused on transparency and accountability, in particular tackling illicit financial flows and combating corruption. The event provided an occasion to launch the OECD-AfDB Anti-Bribery Policy and Compliance Guidance for African Companies.

9 November 2016, Marrakesh - This COP22 side event will focus on the role of policies and domestic enabling conditions to encourage private investment in green infrastructure in developing countries, drawing on lessons learned from country-specific experiences in Jordan and Viet Nam.

The next review of Sweden’s implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, which was scheduled for October 2018, has been delayed until 2019. This is due to the fact that Sweden has not yet enacted legislation to urgently address remaining recommendations to reform its laws on corporate liability for the bribery of foreign public officials.

This paper explores the development of the bioplastics sector and its role in national bioeconomy strategies. It finds that bioplastics are at a disadvantage compared to some other biobased products, notably biofuels, that often benefit from preferential treatment. It also notes that greater efforts are needed at the international level as regards standards to avoid creating barriers to international trade in biobased products.

Japan has good health outcomes and has rapidly increased its spending on health care in recent years. It now needs to focus on improving efficiency of its health system in order to continue delivering high-quality care while containing costs, according to a new OECD report.

The pricing of specialist and hospital services is a contentious issue in South Africa. To help inform domestic debates, the OECD Secretariat has produced a paper profiling international experiences on the pricing of specialist medical services services, competition policy and models of buying services from the private sector.

Improving labour market participation of people with mental health problems requires well-integrated policies and services across the education, employment, health and social sectors. This paper provides examples of policy initiatives from 10 OECD countries for integrated services.

This paper looks at recent trends in pharmaceutical spending across OECD countries. It examines the drivers of recent spending trends, highlighting differences across therapeutic classes, and then looks at emerging challenges for policy makers in the management of pharmaceutical spending.

Healthier lifestyles, higher incomes and better education have all contributed to boost life expectancy in recent decades. Better health care has also helped, according to a new OECD report.

Australia delivered USD 5.44 billion in official development assistance (ODA) last year, or 0.36% of its gross national income. It is the eighth most generous country in the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which groups the world’s major donors. Australia’s goal is to reach 0.5% of GNI by 2017 – a goal the DAC encourages it to follow through on, given its good track record and relatively strong economy.

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are a dominant feature of the world economy that impact growth, jobs and development, but numerous challenges remain to ensure that all countries and all firms have the opportunity to participate and benefit.

On the occasion of his visit, Angel Gurría presented the brochure "Policies for a revitalisation of Japan" and met with government and business representatives.

OECD Secretary-General will visit Japan on 22-24 April to launch the Economic Survey of Japan. During his stay in Tokyo, Mr. Gurría will also meet government officials and representatives from the business and labour communities amongst others.

Cities can generate growth and jobs while becoming greener – this is the message of the OECD’s new Green Growth in Cities report. Drawing on case studies of Paris, Chicago, Kitakyushu and Stockholm, the report identifies green policies that can respond to urban growth priorities and suggests how to implement and finance them.

Japan has good health outcomes and has rapidly increased its spending on health care in recent years. It now needs to focus on improving efficiency of its health system in order to continue delivering high-quality care while containing costs, according to a new OECD report.

In December 2014, the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions agreed to send a High Level Mission to Japan due to longstanding serious concerns about Japan’s implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

A high-level Working Group mission will visit Tokyo on 29-30 June 2016 and meet senior Japanese government officials.

Japan must improve job quality and further reform the mandatory retirement age to address upfront the challenges of its rapidly ageing and shrinking labour force, according to a new OECD report.

Japan’s agriculture sector has traditionally been characterised by small-scale rice production, but has recently begun to respond to new market opportunities for higher value food products across a rapidly growing East Asia. Today, rice represents less than 20% of the value of agriculture production, and larger, more productive, and more profitable farm businesses now account for more than half of total agriculture output.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría opens the Global Forum on Better Governance for Inclusive Growth held in Paris. The Forum will focus on public sector reforms worldwide and identify lessons learned, good practices and innovative solutions for advancing the governance reforms necessary to foster inclusive growth.

This report concludes that actual application of bail-ins, involving bondholders in loss sharing, could effectively reign in perceptions of implicit guarantees for bank debt. However, bail-ins are rare owing to concerns about contagion risks and depositor and investor protection, so implicit guarantees persist.

The value of implicit guarantees has declined from its peak at the height of the financial crisis, which is consistent with progress made regarding the bank regulatory reform agenda, as one would expect that many of the reform measures imply a more limited value of implicit guarantees for bank debt. Implicit guarantees persist however and their value continues to be significant.

This report describes the key findings from responses by 35 countries to a survey on implicit guarantees. Policy makers have announced their intention to rein in the values of implicit guarantees so it is important to measure their value to help facilitate the task of assessing progress in reducing their value.

Bank regulatory reform measures are expected to limit the value of implicit bank debt guarantees, even if not plainly targeting such values. These survey results, covering 35 countries, show that no single policy is considered capable of fully eliminating the market perception that bank debt is “special”. A mixture of different and complementary measures is seen to hold greater promise.

Closing remarks made by the OECD Secretary-General during the Paris Club Forum, organised jointly by the Australian Presidency and the Paris Club.

What are the economic effects of implicit bank debt guarantees and who ultimately benefits? This report sheds light on these questions

This paper explores the relationship between policy settings and extreme positive and negative growth events, what we call GDP tail risks, using quantile regression methods.

Electricity Production in Mali decreased to 453.86 Gigawatt-hour in August from 539.23 Gigawatt-hour in May of 2016. Electricity Production in Mali averaged 260.60 Gigawatt-hour from 2000 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 539.23 Gigawatt-hour in May of 2016 and a record low of 110.49 Gigawatt-hour in February of 2000. This page provides - Mali Electricity Production- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

Economic policy should be better designed to bring about more inclusive growth, ensuring that the benefits of increased prosperity are shared more evenly across society, according to a new report from the OECD and the World Bank.

Denmark’s green growth strategy focuses on moving the energy system away from fossil fuels and investing in green technologies, while limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Germany reduced greenhouse gas emissions substantially but remains an important emitter. Ambitious targets for climate change mitigation have been fixed and a broad range of environmental measures are being implemented.

Renewed impetus for reforms is essential for India to continue to narrow its major gap in living standards with middle-income and OECD economies, to reduce widespread poverty, to reverse rising inequality and to improve the wellbeing of all Indians. Based on the expertise of OECD, this report presents an update of policy advice in critical areas to India’s long-term economic performance and social development.

Latin American governments must act now to strengthen growth and development and counter these risks, according to the 2013 Latin American Economic Outlook, jointly produced by the OECD Development Centre and ECLAC.

The Netherlands has strongly benefited from globalisation, which boosted international trade, cross-border investment and economic growth over the latest decades.

Despite the economic importance of the road transport sector, there is no systematic cross-country evidence on the sector’s efficiency.

In Slovakia, educational outcomes are below the OECD average and are too dependent on the socioeconomic background of students.

In this paper we examine whether past labour market reforms aiming at reducing the rate of unemployment have raised its long-run volatility.

Sweden is a very egalitarian country but inequalities have risen and some groups are poorly integrated into the labour market.

Extensive structural reforms since the early 1990s have strengthened the resilience of the Swedish economy to shocks.

This book deals with two issues. The first concerns the various measurement of fiscal decentralization in general and their usefulness for policy analysis. The second and more specific issue concerns the taxonomy of intergovernmental grants and the limits of the current classifications.

Luxembourg is a rich and fast-growing country. However, inequality of disposable incomes has trended up modestly over the past decades and relative poverty has risen reflecting mainly the rapid growth of high incomes.

The Slovak Republic is one of the most dynamic economies in the euro area. The country has continued to converge rapidly towards the living standards of advanced OECD economies. However, the Slovak Republic should continue on its path of reform to achieve balanced, fair and sustainable growth, according to a new OECD report.

Innovation-based growth, underpinned by investments in a broad range of knowledge-based capital (KBC), is central to raising long-term living standards.

Income inequality and relative poverty in the United States are among the highest in the OECD and have substantially increased over the past decades. These developments have been associated with a number of other worrying statistics, including low intergenerational social mobility and weak real income growth for many households.

Judicial performance and its determinants: a cross-country perspective

This paper derives estimates of the efficiency of welfare spending in Slovenia and the other OECD countries from data envelopment analysis based on model specifications used in earlier OECD studies.