the largest challenges on pension expenditure in the EU are faced by Portugal, Luxembourg and Spain. Greece is however missing in the statistics. Within the new EU countries Cyprus, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic would face the biggest challenges. Among these countries the OECD 2007 report “Pensions at a glance” ranks the countries according to the generosity of pension promises.
This was finalised after the Queensland and Victorian flooding had been observed, but before the impact of Cyclone Yasi could be assessed. I should emphasise that these estimates are preliminary and that a good deal of uncertainty inevitably surrounds them. With those caveats, we expect real GDP will be noticeably lower than it would otherwise have been in the December and March quarters.