The international fight against cross-border tax evasion has entered a new phase with the launch by countries participating in the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information of a peer review process covering a first group of 18 jurisdictions: Australia, Barbados, Bermuda, Botswana, Canada, Cayman Islands, Denmark, Germany, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Jersey, Mauritius, Monaco, Norway, Panama, Qatar, Trinidad & Tobago.

Three new OECD studies say that putting the right price on water will encourage people to waste less, pollute less, and invest more in water infrastructure.

Strengthening environmental protection should be part of government plans to overcome Greece’s economic and financial crisis, says a new OECD report, the OECD Environmental Review of Greece.

The OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría will present three reports at 15h, Tuesday 16 March at the OECD expert meeting on Water Economics and Financing at the OECD Conference Centre in Paris. The meeting is open to the media.

At a conference organised by the U.S. Council for International Business, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría urged governments to support innovation and green growth as a basis for a sustainable recovery, cites a possible Model Investment Treaty as a way to encourage cross-border investment.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría expressed his congratulations to Chile’s new President, Sebastián Piñera, on the occasion of his inauguration, and assured him of the support of the OECD in tackling both reconstruction following the recent earthquake and in relation to longer-term policy challenges.

Strengthening our economies for the future in key areas such as jobs, competition and taxation must now replace crisis management, says the OECD’s latest Going for Growth report. Governments have already started removing some of the emergency measures brought in to save the global economy from collapse.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría welcomed the Portuguese government’s announcement of a fiscal consolidation strategy to cut its budget deficit to below 3% of GDP by 2013 as going in the direction of maintaining market confidence, supporting growth and ensuring fiscal sustainability.

The Bahamas has today signed agreements allowing for exchange of tax information with the seven Nordic economies (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden).

The OECD, World Trade Organization and the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development have called on the leaders of the G20 countries to resist protectionism or the prospects for economic recovery may be wiped out.

Norway’s economy has been particularly resilient during the crisis. The large policy stimulus should be withdrawn soon. Public spending needs to be made more efficient and cost-effective environmental and fishing policies need to be further pursued.

Opening an international conference to discuss the peaceful and responsible development of nuclear energy, A. Gurría said "We are currently seeing a renaissance of the nuclear option, for reasons that are clear to see and primarily to allow us to meet the challenge of climate change". The conference, held at the OECD, was organised by the French government in co-ordination with the IAEA and with the support of the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency.

The unemployment rate for the OECD area fell slightly to 8.7% in January 2010, reflecting drops of 0.3 percentage points in the United States and Japan.

OECD composite leading indicators (CLIs) in January 2010 continue to signal an improvement in economic activity for the G7 countries although only marginally more so than in the assessment for December.