OECD INDICATORS FORESEE GENERALLY CONTINUED EXPANSION

Paris, February 15 (Xinhua)- Most member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will continue to see expansion in near term as the OECD composite leading indicators (CLIs) for December 2010 mostly showed an upwards trend, OECD said in its monthly report on Monday.

According to the graphs, the CLIs of Germany, Japan and the United State pointed to relatively robust expansion as their indicators grew year-on-year between 3.2 points and 4.9 points, and all above the benchmark of 100 points.

For Canada, France and Britain, the CLIs pointed to continued moderate expansion as their readings showed negative growth compared with those in last December but still positive growth from previous month. Italy, with descending indicators since last August, nevertheless signalled a downturn emerging.

Taking OECD area as a whole, the report said the area has regained growth momentum while the euro zone rallied stable pace of expansion.

For emerging countries, OECD CLIs showed that China's data pointed to a downturn, reversing the tentative signs of regained growth momentum reported last month; India's data indicated a slowdown; Russia continued to direct expansion and Brazil pointed to stable performance.

The CLIs are designed to anticipate turning points in economic activity approximately six months in advance. Judging from the changing trend and size of CLIs based on the benchmark of 100 points, economic activities are defined by four major phases: expansion (increasing above 100), downturn (decreasing but above 100), slowdown (decreasing below 100) and recovery (increasing but below 100).

<