Speech given by OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann to open Future-Ready Economy 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Check against delivery.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul,
Ministers,
Khun Piyachart Isarabhakdee,
Excellencies, Ambassadors,
Distinguished guests, colleagues, friends all,
Sawasdee khrap.
Thank you for inviting me to open Future-Ready Economy 2026.
This week, the world's economic conversation has come to Bangkok.
For the first time in thirty-five years, Thailand is hosting the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group.
This is a clear recognition of how far Thailand has come. And of how much Southeast Asia matters to the global economy.
I have watched that journey evolve from close by for decades. Across my years in Australian public life, as a Senator and as Finance Minister, Thailand is one of our region's great success stories.
A country that opened up, built up and moved tens of millions of people into a better life.
It is a real pleasure to be back.
It is also the right moment to ask the question this forum puts at its core.
Not just: how fast can we grow?
But: are our economies ready for what comes next?
Let me start with a simple proposition.
A future-ready economy is not one that predicts the future correctly.
Nobody does.
If history has taught us anything, if the last decade in particular has taught us anything, it is that even when planning for several plausible futures – as we should – the future continues to take us by surprise.
A future-ready economy is one that can adapt.
Quickly.
Whatever the future brings.
And what the evidence of the past decade tells us as well is that adaptability is not a question of luck.
Adaptability is a choice.
It is built.
It is built by the choices governments make.
By how well markets are allowed to work.
By the skills people have.
By the strength of institutions.
So this morning I want to do three things.
First, share the OECD's assessment of where the global economy stands.
Second, draw out what that tells us about what it takes to be future-ready.
I will go through the five forms of capital this forum has put on the agenda as my guide.
And third, I will say something about how the OECD is working closely with Thailand and others across this region to help us get there.
Where the global economy stands
The global economy has been through a remarkable run of shocks.
A once-in-a-century pandemic brought economies to a standstill.
Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine delivered a major energy shock.
Inflation surged.
That triggered the most rapid and synchronised monetary policy tightening in decades.
Then tariffs expanded, with trade and policy uncertainty rising sharply.
And this year, the conflicts in the Middle East which have delivered another major test.
By the end of August, the cumulative loss of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz had reached 2.8 billion barrels.
That is almost one month of global oil consumption.
Global growth slowed from an annualised rate of 3.5% in the second half of last year to 2.7% in the first half of this year.
But here is the important point.
It held up better than expected.
In June, we projected growth of 2.4% for the first half of this year. The outcome was 2.7%.
Why? Because economies adapted.
Oil and gas markets adjusted on both sides.
On the supply side, additional production outside the Gulf, alternative export routes, large inventory drawdowns and coordinated releases of strategic reserves narrowed the shortfall.
We estimate that these supply-side adjustments offset just over half of the oil exports lost.
On the demand side, consumers and businesses cut consumption and switched to other energy sources as prices rose.
Almost one-third of the global reduction in oil demand came from China.
The second source of resilience was AI.
In the twelve months to July, production of computers and electronics grew by 11% in the United States, 18% in the European Union, 19% in China and 12% on average across other major Asian economies.
In each case, that was far faster than overall industrial production, which stagnated in Europe and grew by just 1% in the United States.
Between January and May this year, 70% of the growth in the value of global goods trade came from AI-enabling products.
What began as a technological breakthrough is becoming a once in a generation economic transformation.
And this region is at the heart of it.
So the lesson of 2026 is the lesson of this forum.
The economies that adapt are the economies that hold up.
The outlook
Looking ahead, we project global growth of 2.9% this year and 3.0% next year.
Many emerging market economies continue to grow much faster than the global average.
India is projected to grow by 7.1% this year. Indonesia by 5.2%. China by 4.5%.
Here in Thailand, we expect growth to strengthen from 1.7% this year to 2.1% next year.
I will come back to what it would take to lift that further.
Higher energy prices are pushing up inflation.
More than half of the G20 countries now have inflation above their central bank's target.
We project G20 inflation to rise from 3.4% last year to 4.1% this year, before easing again to 3.6% next year.
The risks around this outlook are substantial, and they lean to the downside.
The most immediate is a further cut to energy supplies from the Middle East.
The buffers that absorbed the first shock are thinner now.
Global oil inventories were 507 million barrels lower in August than in February.
That is a fall of around 6%.
The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1982. Gas stocks have been drawn down too.
Food prices are a second risk, with drought in the Northern Hemisphere, disruption to Black Sea grain and a very strong El Niño expected before the end of the year.
And governments have less room to respond than they once did.
In every G20 country except Germany and Türkiye, public debt as a share of GDP is higher today than it was in 2007.
Investors are demanding more to lend to governments.
In September, thirty-year government bond yields were at fifteen-year highs or more in every G7 economy except Italy.
That raises debt servicing costs. It raises refinancing risks. And it makes it more expensive for households to borrow and for businesses to invest.
If energy and food prices stay high and financial conditions tighten further, we estimate global growth next year would be 0.7 percentage points lower and inflation 1.1 percentage points higher than in our central projection.
So the immediate task for policymakers is clear.
Keep inflation expectations anchored.
Keep energy support targeted and temporary.
Untargeted support is fiscally costly, and it blunts the incentive to save energy and diversify supply.
And rebuild fiscal buffers, so there is room to respond to the next shock.
The deeper challenge
But managing today's pressures cannot come at the expense of preparing for tomorrow's.
Because underneath the shocks, there is a slower-moving challenge.
Growth is losing momentum.
At around 3%, global growth is well below the 3.7% average of the two decades before the pandemic.
And on current policies, we estimate global potential growth will fall from 2.9% today to 1.7% by 2050.
Why?
Two reasons.
First, demographics.
Over the past decade, much of the growth came from more people working.
Participation rose. Unemployment fell.
Population ageing makes those gains hard to repeat.
Between 2023 and 2060, the working-age population in the average OECD country is projected to fall by 8%.
In Thailand, the projected decline is 29%.
Fewer workers means each worker has to produce more.
Which brings me to the second reason.
Productivity growth has slowed.
In the median OECD country, productivity growth fell from 2.0% a year between 2001 and 2007 to 0.8% between 2020 and 2024.
Less than half its earlier pace.
Thailand shows both the achievement and the challenge.
Thailand's progress has been remarkable.
GDP per person increased from 30% of the OECD average in 2000 to 40% in 2013.
But more than ten years later, in 2024, it was still 40%.
As productivity growth slowed, from 4.8% a year in the early 2000s to 1.7% a year since 2020, convergence towards higher living standards has stalled.
That gap between where Thailand is and where Thailand can be should not be seen as a problem.
It is Thailand’s opportunity.
And the way to seize it is to make productivity, once again, the main engine of growth.
Five capitals for a future-ready economy
This forum asks us to think about capital more broadly than money.
The OECD's evidence supports that.
Financial capital matters.
But it only delivers when it is combined with competitive markets, strong institutions, skilled people and trusted partnerships.
So let me take your five capitals in turn and offer an OECD perspective on each.
Capital for Growth
Capital for growth starts with competition.
Competition drives productivity.
It rewards innovation, efficiency and the adoption of new technology.
And it gives tomorrow's leading companies the chance to become today's challengers.
The OECD's Product Market Regulation indicators show significant room to boost competition across emerging Asia.
Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia all have more restrictive regulatory settings than the average OECD country.
Barriers to entry, complex administrative requirements and restrictions in network sectors are the main concerns.
In Thailand, the settings for market entry are especially restrictive, and the State remains heavily involved in network sectors such as electricity, transport and telecommunications.
When those sectors are shielded from competition, the higher costs flow through to every business in the economy.
The objective is not simply less regulation.
It is better regulation.
Simpler processes, fewer barriers to entry and a level playing field between public and private firms.
Capital for growth also means capital that works harder.
Asia's capital markets already operate at global scale.
The region is home to 56% of the world's listed companies and 30% of outstanding corporate bonds.
The foundations are there. But valuations are often low.
Across six Southeast Asian countries, half of all listed companies are worth less in the market than the value of their assets net of debt.
That reflects concentrated ownership, low dividends, large cash holdings and investor doubts about how well capital is used.
The OECD's experience shows what helps.
More accountable boards.
More transparency about controlling owners.
Better protection for minority shareholders.
And for firms not yet ready to list, more options.
Asia generates 31% of global GDP but accounts for only 20% of global private-equity assets.
Better information on firms and closer links between businesses and investors can help close that gap.
Third, capital for growth means harnessing AI across the whole economy.
AI offers an enormous productivity opportunity. But the gains depend on how widely it is adopted.
With slow adoption, we estimate AI would add 0.2 percentage points a year to productivity growth in the average G20 country over the next decade.
With rapid adoption and more capable AI, that rises to 0.8 percentage points. Four times as much.
The difference between those two numbers is policy.
Digital infrastructure.
Trusted data governance.
Digital security.
And adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises, not just the largest firms.
Connectivity still shapes opportunity.
Urban fixed-broadband speeds are 18% higher than rural speeds in Thailand and 61% higher in Indonesia.
A firm outside the big cities cannot build on cloud computing and AI if the connection is not there.
Capital for People
All of this depends on people.
Technology is only as powerful as the skills of the people who use it.
And this is where Thailand has its single biggest opportunity.
The 2025 results of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) were published last month.
They show 41% of Thai fifteen-year-olds performing below baseline proficiency in science, compared with 26% across the OECD.
The figures were 63% in Indonesia, 46% in Malaysia, 29% in Viet Nam and 10% in Singapore.
Only 1% of Thai students were top performers in science, compared with 7% across the OECD and 26% in Singapore.
To be clear, this is not only a Thai challenge.
PISA 2025 recorded the lowest OECD-average performance in reading and mathematics since the assessment began.
But for an economy that needs each worker to produce more, with a shrinking workforce, there is no higher-return investment than lifting learning outcomes.
It starts with early learning.
It runs through schools and vocational education.
And it continues throughout a working life, because careers will now span several waves of technological change.
Capital for people also means bringing more people into good jobs.
With fewer working-age people, Thailand cannot afford to leave talent on the sidelines.
Higher participation by women and older workers, and a lower cost of creating formal jobs, so that more workers move out of informality and into jobs with protection, training and access to credit.
Strengthening the middle, as this forum puts it, is exactly that.
Productivity growth that shows up in wages. And a labour market where more people can share in it.
Capital for Transition
The energy shock of this year has made one thing very clear.
Secure, diversified and affordable energy is a competitiveness issue.
The economies least exposed were those with diversified supply, strong energy efficiency and the flexibility to switch between sources.
So the transition is not only about emissions. It is about energy security, price competitiveness and resilience.
That means diversifying energy sources, including through renewables, investing in grids and storage, improving energy efficiency, and reforming the relevant regulatory and tax arrangements to drive greater self-sufficiency and lower costs.
It also means adaptation.
Thailand's agriculture, infrastructure and coastal cities are exposed to climate risks.
Investment in resilience now is far cheaper than repair later.
And it means doing this in a way that is fair.
Targeted support for those who need it, rather than broad subsidies that are costly and weaken incentives to adjust.
Capital for Resilience
Resilience from within starts with strong macroeconomic foundations.
Cross-border capital flows support investment and allow savings to go where they are most productive.
But they can reverse sharply when global risk levels go up.
In March this year, emerging market economies saw net portfolio outflows of 86 billion US dollars from bond and equity markets.
The encouraging news is that emerging Asia is far more resilient than it was before the global financial crisis.
Our analysis shows countries with more independent central banks and lower public debt experience substantially smaller capital outflows in periods of global stress.
Strong policy frameworks make a difference.
Which is why openness and resilience are not competing objectives.
That is the approach embodied in the OECD Code of Liberalisation of Capital Movements.
It is the only binding international instrument dedicated to the openness and transparency of capital-flow policies.
It supports the progressive removal of restrictions, while allowing countries to respond to instability, provided that any measures are transparent, non-discriminatory, proportionate and temporary.
There is scope for further opening in Southeast Asia.
Outward investment in foreign shares and bonds remains significantly more restricted than in the OECD.
Those restrictions are meant to keep savings at home.
But keeping capital at home does not turn it into productive investment.
Reform should proceed gradually, in step with stronger macroeconomic, financial and institutional frameworks.
Resilience also means building fiscal room.
The countries that came through this year's shock best were those with the space to respond.
Rebuilding that space is not austerity. It is insurance.
Capital for Security
Finally, security by design.
Geopolitical tensions are reshaping trade and investment.
Governments are right to ask where their vulnerabilities lie.
The OECD's evidence points to one clear answer.
The vulnerability is concentration. The protection is diversification.
Take critical minerals.
The number of export restrictions on critical raw materials has increased more than fivefold since 2009.
The more concentrated the supply, the greater the exposure.
The most secure economy is not the one that tries to make everything itself.
It is the one with the most options.
Trusted partners.
Diversified suppliers.
Open markets with strong rules.
That is why foreign direct investment matters so much.
It brings capital, but also technology, skills, management expertise and access to markets.
Across Southeast Asia, even excluding Singapore, the stock of inward foreign direct investment rose from 40% of GDP in 2015 to 59% in 2024.
The region now holds a larger share of global foreign investment than Latin America and other dynamic emerging regions.
But our data also show regulatory restrictions on foreign investment remain higher in every Southeast Asian country than the OECD average, especially in real estate, construction, transport, telecommunications, media and finance.
Supply-chain diversification is shifting the geography of investment.
Southeast Asia stands to benefit.
Policy will decide how much.
And it is why trade integration matters.
Trade facilitation reforms have already cut trade costs across Southeast Asia by 6%.
There is more to do on that front with customs, digital documentation and border management.
And regional integration is increasingly about services, data and digital payments.
Our analysis suggests an ambitious ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement could increase Thailand's trade with regional partners by 24% and its total trade by 5%.
Security by design, in other words, is built on trusted openness.
Not on walls.
How the OECD helps
These five capitals reinforce one another.
Competition creates the incentive to innovate.
Finance and digital infrastructure enable investment. Trade and foreign investment bring markets, technology and ideas.
Skills turn all of it into productivity gains.
And strong institutions hold it together.
No single policy is enough. And no country does this alone.
That is where the OECD comes in.
We provide the data and the analysis, so that policy is based on evidence rather than assertion.
We provide the standards.
On competition, corporate governance, investment, tax, anti-corruption, digital policy and AI.
Standards that give investors confidence and give governments a benchmark.
We provide a platform for countries to learn from each other, including through our Southeast Asia Regional Programme.
Thailand has been part of it from the start. You co-chaired our Southeast Asia Regional Programme with Korea between 2018 to 2022.
And you have hosted our Regional Ministerial Forum several times, most recently here in Bangkok last year.
And, with Thailand and Indonesia, we are now involved in the most intensive form of cooperation and engagement through our OECD accession process.
Prime Minister, Thailand's strong commitment to this process has been clear at every step.
The OECD Council invited Thailand to open accession discussions in June 2024.
In December last year, you personally submitted Thailand's Initial Memorandum.
That self-assessment against the full body of OECD standards and best practices opened the technical phase of Thailand’s process of accession.
And this year you have placed the process under your direct chairmanship, with a national committee bringing together your Deputy Prime Ministers and every key agency.
You are providing very serious and purposeful leadership to this process.
It will pay dividends. Thank you.
Accession is not only a destination. It is a journey that delivers benefits along the way.
It helps anchor a reform process based on a country’s priorities – pursuing systematic alignment with international best practice.
Twenty-five OECD committees are working with Thailand to review laws, policies and practices in depth to ensure they align with international best practice, from competition to investment, corporate governance, digital policy, education, trade, environment and public governance.
Experience shows that accession accelerates reform, strengthens investor confidence, strengthens development and growth momentum and improves resilience.
Countries that have completed it will tell you the process itself was the prize.
For Thailand, it comes at exactly the right moment.
It can anchor your reform agenda on productivity, competition and skills.
It can help deepen Thailand's integration into the rules-based global economy.
And it can help make Thailand an even more attractive destination for the high-quality investment this region is competing for.
And the benefits run both ways.
The OECD will be stronger for having Thailand's perspective and experience at the table.
Southeast Asia is where much of the world's growth has and will continue to come from for a long time to come.
We want that voice in the room where the standards are set.
The OECD will be with Thailand at every step of the way.
Your success will also be our success.
Closing
Let me close where I began.
We are living through a period of profound change.
Technology is transforming how we produce and work. Demographics are reshaping our workforces. Geopolitics is changing the map of trade and investment. And governments are navigating all of it with less fiscal room than before.
We cannot stop these changes.
But we can decide how ready we are for them.
Future-readiness is not a forecast. It is a capability.
It is built with competition that rewards the innovator.
With capital that reaches the firms that can use it best.
With energy that is secure and affordable.
With macroeconomic foundations strong enough to stay open through a storm.
With supply chains and partnerships that are trusted and diverse.
And above all, with people who have the skills to turn every new technology into opportunity.
The OECD was founded on a simple idea. Countries are stronger when they work together, learn from one another, and base their decisions on evidence.
That idea is as relevant in Bangkok in 2026 as it has ever been.
Thailand has chosen that path. The OECD is proud to walk it with you.
My very best wishes for a positive, productive and successful Future-Ready Economy 2026.
Khop khun khrap. Thank you.
Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to preserve individual liberty and improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.