Agro Perspectiva

OECD Secretary General: The problem of employment remains very important today

19.07.2013 08:02 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — «The problem of employment has not lost its topicality today», Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Angel Gurria said in an interview with the Voice of Russia. A conference of the labour and employment ministers, and the finance ministers of the G20 Group has opened in Moscow (July 18th to 19th). The International Labour Organization (ILO) will provide new information about the situation on the labour markets of the G20 countries. The day before Angel Gurria and ILO Director-General Guy Ryder held a joint press conference where they unveiled a survey titled «Short-Term Labour Market Outlook and Key Challenges in G20 Countries». «We are happy to have a chance to give you the latest data from the joint report of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD) about the situation on the labour markets of the G20 countries. This report was prepared for the ministerial conference in Moscow», Guy Ryder said. «After Russia took over the presidency of the G20 Group, it formulated the top priorities to promote the G20 economic growth and employment», the ILO Director-General said, adding that the documents presented by the two agencies — the ILO and the OECD — confirm that Russia was absolutely right in defining the priorities in this field. An alarming situation that emerged on the labour markets of the G20 countries has worsened over the past 12 months: the unemployment rate has grown in half of the G20 members. Since the economic growth is practically non-existent, the unemployment rate remains very high, the report says. Only in the 4 member countries of the Group of 20 — China, India, Japan, and Korea — the unemployment rate does not exceed 5 per cent while in Canada, France, Italy, Turkey, Britain, and the USA, and also in South Africa and Spain, the number of unemployed persons has topped 25 per cent. In other words, 93 million people in the G20 member countries do not have jobs, which is a little bit higher than Germany’s population size, the ILO Director-General said. By the way, in Russia the unemployment rate is 5 per cent, as President Vladimir Putin told a conference in Siberia. At the latest Ibero-American summit in Cadiz in Spain in November last year paramount attention was paid to the successful experience of the Central and South American countries in the overcoming of the world economic crisis and to their efforts to eliminate its consequences. Comparisons with far more developed Western Europe were made. Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are the G20 member-states. "Two things are of importance here. There is quite a number of examples offering proof that the problem of employment was successfully settled in a number of countries, and there are also examples showing that some countries have suffered great losses on this «front». We have worked out all possible options for the development of the situation in the field of employment, with due regard for traditional formats. The Moscow conference makes it possible to exchange experience that has proved successful and to prevent the undesirable turn of events. The Organization for Cooperation and Development has chosen the Better Policy for Better Life motto for itself . Can we expect that this motto will be realized in the form of concrete decisions and programmes, which may be adopted at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg in September this year. «There is no doubt that it is possible. We would like our message to be „blessed“ by the leaders of the G20 nations», OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said.