OECD forecasts combined growth of China

Global economy faces a number of challenges both in short and long term, but growth will be sustainedly driven by fast-growing emerging countries in the long-term, although at a declining rate, and the growth of the non-OECD G20 countries will continue to outpace OECD countries by the year of 2060, the Paris-based OECD said Friday in its first 50-year forecast report.

Plagued by economic crisis and sluggish growth for years, many countries need a period of adjustment to absorb the legacies of the crisis and to seek ways to spur growth.

"Once the legacy of the global financial crisis has been overcome, global GDP could grow at around 3 percent per year over the next 50 years, but variations are foreseen between countries and region," the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projected in its report.

The Paris-based think tank saw fast-growing emerging countries as the principal driver of the long-term outlook. "Growth will be enabled by continued fiscal and structural reforms and sustained by the rising share of relatively fast-growing emerging countries in global output," it said in the report "Looking to 2060: Long-term global growth prospects" which was released Friday by Secretary-General Angel Gurria.

The report also found that the difference will narrow over coming decades, with the growth rate in non-OECD countries declining from over 7 percent per year over the last decade to around 5 percent in the 2020s, and then to about half that by the 2050s, whereas trend growth for the OECD will be around on average 1.75 to 2.25 percent per year.

However, tremendous changes will be seen in relative size of world economies as the report indicated that China and India would make their combined GDP soon surpass that of the G7 economies and exceed that of the entire 34-member OECD countries by 2060.