OECD "AI to contribute 0.4%% percentage points to annual growth… GDP down 5%% if supply chains collapse" [APEC 2025]

Speech at the 'Gyeongju APEC CEO Summit'

Mathias Cormann, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit held on the 29th at the Gyeongju Arts Center and said, "Over the next 10 years, artificial intelligence (AI) will raise annual labor productivity by up to 0.4% percentage points." Regarding supply chain concerns due to tariff imposition, he warned, "Shifting production back domestically would reduce global real gross domestic product (GDP) by more than 5%."

Secretary-General Cormann presented this OECD outlook in a session titled 'Global Economic Issues and Challenges.' He noted, "The global economy has shown remarkable resilience, maintaining an annual growth rate of 3.2% in the first half of this year, but it will slow to 2.9% next year," and pointed out, "If trade barriers rise further or policy uncertainty persists, production costs will increase and investment and consumption will contract, leading to lower growth rates."

He said the Asia-Pacific region, being highly dependent on trade in intermediate goods, would be hit harder by supply chain disruptions caused by tariffs. He said, "Analyzing more than 4,800 items worldwide, import concentration has increased by about 50% since the late 1990s, and as a result the risks from supply chain disruptions have grown," and added, "Shifting production back domestically creates new vulnerabilities and could reduce global real GDP by more than 5%." His remarks pointed to movements by countries to raise tariff walls and bring back factories that had been relocated overseas.

He said, "Diversify suppliers by region, and particularly do not become overly dependent on a single country for key goods or resources," and "We need to build more resilient global supply chains."

On AI, he said, "(Even if adoption in production sites is slow) AI will contribute 0.2~0.4% percentage points to annual labor productivity growth over the next 10 years," and added, "To optimize these benefits, SMEs must be more confident in AI." He added, "To that end, we should strengthen technical capabilities and foster a more competitive AI ecosystem to encourage the provision of better services at lower prices."

In the same session, David Hill, CEO of Deloitte Asia Pacific, who spoke as a panelist, said, "In a survey of 1,200 CEOs in the APEC region, more than half of respondents said that the APEC region's contribution to growth would more than double from 19% to 37%," and "42% responded that innovation and new products would be the main drivers of growth in three years."

According to the survey, more than half of respondents (over 50%) are currently seeking supply chain diversification, and 51% are investing in supply chain digitization and automation. Regarding AI, more than half of CEOs said they are increasing investment and spending on AI, and 60% said they are already experiencing the benefits and effects of AI investments.

Gyeongju = Yang Gil-seong, reporter vertigo@hankyung.com