GDP in OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries recorded its sharpest contraction on record in the first quarter of 2009, the body revealed overnight.
Economic growth was -2.1 per cent, the OECD said, the largest fall since it began keeping records in 1960 and slightly worse than the -2.0 per cent recorded for the previous quarter.
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Compared to the same quarter in 2008, GDP fell by a sizeable 4.2 per cent.
Over the quarter Japan experienced the largest contraction of 4 per cent, followed by Germany which contracted by 3.8 per cent. The United States contracted by a smaller 1.6 per cent