The transatlantic gap in economic performance is set to widen, the Organization for Economic Coop-eration and Development (OECD) said on Thursday, as it prepared to reduce its euro-zone growth forecast while maintaining its prediction for the US.
The OECD will maintain its 2.6-percent US growth prediction for this year but "significantly" revise its euro-zone forecast in the face of declining investor confidence, its chief economist Jean-Philippe Cotis announced.
"The difference in outlooks between Europe and the United States may already be getting wider," Cotis said.
"In the United States, growth is holding up, with a rise in durable goods orders and a return of investment, which is good news," he said.
Promised tax cuts should also help to sustain US consumer spending, he said.
Shortly after the OECD's announcement, the release of new US productivity figures for last year appeared to lend support to its positive outlook for the US economy.
The new statistics from Washington showed US businesses last year increased productivity -- output per hour worked -- by 4.8 percent, a 52-year high.
Nevertheless, Cotis warned that the US economy was not immune to current high levels of geopolitical uncertainty and consumer nerves, saying the US had "not yet returned to healthy and balanced economic fundamentals".
The situation was already worse in the euro zone, however, where the OECD is to revise the 1.8-percent growth forecast for this year "in a significant manner", Cotis said, to reflect worsening investor confidence.
The forecast would be revised downward even more for Germany when the new predictions are published in two months' time.
The OECD said Germany had achieved 0.0-percent growth in the last quarter of last year, as against 0.2 percent in France, 0.4 percent in Italy and 0.3 percent for the entire euro zone.
Several euro-zone governments are already struggling to control their public deficits which, under EU rules, are supposed to be kept below 3.0 percent of GDP. Portugal and Germany are already the subject of formal proceedings, leading to possible fines, for breaching the deficit ceiling last year, and could soon be joined by France.
Cotis said European governments were paying the price for their failure to reduce deficits during recent "fat cow periods" of higher growth.
The British and US economies had grown by 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter, the OECD said -- representing annualized growth of around 1.7 percent, against the euro zone's 1.0 percent.
However, the US was set to double its growth to 0.8 percent in the first quarter of this year -- or 3 percent in 12-month terms -- while the euro zone was seen stagnating at 0.3 percent and Britain at 0.4 percent.
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