The growth of output in OECD member countries has been abruptly checked. Helped perhaps by relatively favourable weather, industrial production appears to have increased by 1-1½ per cent in the first quarter. In the second, however, there seems to have been quite a significant fall in Western Europe as well as in the United States, and a marked slowing down of growth in Japan (table 1). We no longer expect the aggregate rise for the year in member countries to be any more than ½ per cent (implying a drop of similar magnitude from the first quarter's rate), and the OECD secretariat has been forecasting a marginal fall. In terms of GDP the change of trend has been less pronounced but may well have been equally general. Though both we and OECD are expecting a rise of a little more than 1 per cent for the whole of 1980, some fall seems likely in the second half of the year.