Low growth and huge current account deficits have characterised the Portuguese economy over the past decade.

Restoring competitiveness is one of the key challenges to bring European economies back on a path of strong, sustainable and balanced growth. Europe could improve its growth prospects by implementing a strategic reform agenda with a broad range of policy reforms to increase productivity, dynamism and employment.

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

Structural reforms offer governments a powerful tool to boost economic growth, create jobs and bring about a strong and balanced economic recovery, according to the OECD’s latest Going for Growth report.

Today the OECD is publishing a report on Portugal's challenges as far as structural reform is concerned. The OECD is an outstanding reference for policy-makers all around the world and I wanted my country to benefit from your skills, experience, and insights, especially on the question of structural reform, said the Portuguese Prime Minister.

After two decades of strong economic growth and convergence in living standards towards the levels of more prosperous OECD countries, Portugal’s performance weakened in the 2000s, productivity growth slowed and competitiveness deteriorated. Restoring Portugal’s potential for strong, inclusive growth calls for a comprehensive reform of the State.

As its workforce ages and major economies shift towards producing higher value-added goods and services, New Zealand will face increasing challenges to remain globally competitive and maintain high living standards. Future growth will need to come increasingly from productivity gains, and resources will have to shift towards activities that rely more on skills, technology and intangible assets.

Young firms play a crucial role in job creation but have missed out on many of the benefits of structural reforms of the past decade in OECD countries.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría strongly supports President François Hollande’s recently announced measures to revitalise the French economy and set it on a path towards stronger growth.

Inequality – now at its highest level in decades in many countries – undermines economic growth and well-being, says a new OECD report. But policies to tackle the widening gap between rich and poor will only succeed if they also look beyond income and address better access to high-quality education, health care and public infrastructure, it adds.

Having been hit hard by the global crisis, the Portuguese government has taken action to put its economy back on track, and to correct external and budgetary imbalances. This document highlights some key priorities to support economic growth and competitiveness through further productivity-enhancing structural reforms.

Fundamental reforms have helped put the Portuguese economy back on the right track, but a durable recovery will require additional measures to improve export competitiveness, create jobs and ensure social protection for those most in need, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Portugal.

Mexico now has the chance to dramatically boost growth rates and resume convergence of its living standards towards those of advanced economies, reduce pervasive labour market informality and drive down high rates of poverty and income inequality.

Stronger manufacturing would increase productivity and make growth more inclusive, while contributing to improved current account balance. In particular, India should aim for more formal jobs, as these tend to be the most secure and of highest productivity.

The Belgian economy has returned to growth and continues scoring well on broader measures of well-being, but further reforms will be needed to secure fiscal sustainability while promoting employment and competitiveness, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Belgium 2015.

As other high-income countries, Spain has experienced competitive pressures from China and other emerging economies that have resulted in a loss of global market share.

The Latvian economy is among the fastest-growing in the euro area, but continued reforms will promote a rapid and sustainable pace of convergence with upper-income countries while limiting the risk of repeated boom-and-bust cycles, according to the OECD Economic Survey of Latvia.

The project provided recommendations to the city of Medellin and Antioquia to support the development of the local economy and includes a focus on how the innovative environment can be strengthened to support inclusion, entrepreneurship, SME, and local developmentto and how to better coordinate and integrate its policies with the national level.

Russia faces very large challenges in modernising its large transport system. Promoting competition in the transport sector is essential, in particular by effectively opening the railway freight market to independent operators.

Climate change and, more generally, environmental damage have quantifiable economic and health costs, which weigh on long-term growth and well-being. If left unchecked, climate change is projected to decrease global GDP by 0.7 to 2.5 % by 2060. At the same time, the costs to society of air pollution already appear substantial–equivalent to some 4% of GDP across OECD countries and even higher in some rapidly developing economies.

The report discusses the changes in perspective and changes in the OECD’s analysis, instruments and tools that are required to gear the OECD towards addressing future challenges in an increasingly interconnected and complex global economy. It maps the policy trade-offs and complementarities and discusses the policy implications and recommendations deriving from NAEC projects to support an inclusive and sustainable growth agenda.

The OECD’s Annual Meeting at Ministerial Level reinforced member governments’ support across a broad range of key OECD work.

In the years before the economic crisis, Portugal had low growth, a decline in export competitiveness and rising imbalances that included a large current account deficit and a strong expansion of the non-tradable sector. Strengthening export performance is therefore one of the principal challenges for Portugal.

This paper provides empirical evidence on links between the productivity of Portuguese firms and a number of policy variables in Portugal. The analysis is based on a census of Portuguese manufacturing companies, covering more than 40,000 firms between 2006 and 2011.

Children are paying a high price for today’s growing inequality, according to a new OECD report.

A long period of economic expansion in Chile has raised living standards and dramatically reduced poverty, but more needs to be done now to ensure that the country is in a position to move to a stronger, more inclusive and sustainable growth path, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Chile.

Countries that implement stringent environmental policies do not lose export competitiveness when compared against countries with more moderate regulations, according to a new OECD study that examines trade in manufactured goods between advanced and emerging economies.

Polish economic growth remains solid and unemployment is decreasing, but further investments in infrastructure and skills will be essential to sustain a continuing improvement in living standards, environmental quality and well-being, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Poland.

Boosting investment in infrastructure and logistics, further liberalising the network industries, improving investment in human and knowledge-based capital to allow upgrading in the global value chains will be essential to enhance export performance.

Declining productivity growth and rising inequality are two of the biggest obstacles to improved economic performance, according to a new OECD report.

Over the last decade, Poland has significantly upgraded its infrastructure network, and public investment has risen rapidly. However, bottlenecks still weigh on productivity growth and environmental and health outcomes, and the perceived quality of transport and energy infrastructure remains lower than in most OECD countries.

Improving opportunities for women in the United States

With weak domestic demand and a relatively low export share in the economy there is much potential to raise exports. Despite a recent pick-up Greek export performance deteriorated in the last decade particularly in the service sector and by much more than in the Euro area on average

Measures that enable the acquisition of new skills and reduce mismatches between the demand and supply of existing skills can boost US economic growth and make its benefits more inclusive.

The Portuguese economy is gradually recovering from a deep recession thanks to a broad structural reform agenda that has led to rising economic growth, falling unemployment and remarkable progress in export performance.

Portugal’s economy has successfully recovered from the strong recession that lasted until 2014. Nonetheless, the economy’s still low investment, which has declined far more than in other Euro area countries, remains a source of concern.

For each hour worked Portugal produces about half of the output produced in the United States.

This OECD technical report to G-20 Finance Ministers and Governors provides an assessment of progress on structural reform to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth under the G-20 Enhanced Structural Reform Agenda (ESRA) agreed at the Hangzhou summit.

The Slovak Republic continues exhibiting robust economic performance, with strong growth backed by a sound financial sector, low public debt and high international competitiveness drawing on large inward investment.

Sweden is an egalitarian society in international comparison, and has managed to combine equity with economic efficiency.

Despite significant progress made, improving skills remains one of Portugal’s key challenges for raising growth, living standards and well-being.

Não obstante o progresso significativo conseguido, melhorar as competências e as qualificações continua a ser um dos principais desafios que Portugal enfrenta para aumentar o crescimento, os níveis de vida e o bem-estar.

Living standards in China have greatly improved over the past few decades. Both sustained economic growth and an expansion of the social security system have contributed to a sharp reduction in the number of people in poverty.

International trade plays an important role in the Estonian economy. Around a half of the private sector employment is sustained by foreign demand, twice as much as the OECD average.

Unemployment is still above 8% in Latvia and contributes to poverty, in part because many unemployed have been without a job for an extended period of time.

Higher living standards and well-being, as well as convergence with more advanced economies, will depend on achieving higher productivity, which in turn would be boosted by more investment in capital.

This paper investigates the effect of export entry on productivity, employment and wages of Latvian and Estonian firms in the context of global value chain (GVC).

A favourable business environment is crucial to boosting Belgium’s productivity and inclusiveness and to sustain improvements in long-term economic prosperity.

Thanks to a highly developed welfare state, poverty is moderate on average in France, but – as in other countries – highly concentrated in some neighbourhoods.

Norway makes substantial public investment in transport and this has intensified in recent years. There is potentially large economic benefit from such investment, particularly as good transport infrastructure can help Norway’s transition away from oil-related activities.