Twenty-first Report on the Activities of the Monetary Committee.

Abstract

The expansion of world economic activity wasagain only moderate in 1979, with growth rates ofproduction and world trade similar to those of 1978.The imbalances in the current balance of paymentspositions of the major country groupings widened:on the one hand the OPEC surplus increased sharply,in contrast to a fall in 1978, and on the other the com-bined OECD balance moved back into substantialdeficit and the position of the non-oil developingcountries deteriorated further. This overall picturehowever, masks sharp individual differences, withthe deficit of the United States being substantially re-duced while the Japanese and German positionsswung strongly from surplus to deficit.