The significance accorded by media commentators to OECD and IMF forecasts remains a mystery. Both were later even than the consensus of economists to recognise last year's developing recession. Neither predicted the emerging strength of the current recovery, reflected in a V-shaped rebound in industrial output in emerging economies and this week's upbeat G7 manufacturing surveys.

Both are political bodies and thereby constrained from issuing forecasts implying criticism of member governments' policies. The IMF's warnings of financial and economic doom since late 2008 have not been unrelated to its demands for additional funding.

Both organisations have been unaccountably, and so far wrongly, negative on the UK's relative economic performance, predicting late last year that Britain would suffer the largest annual decline in GDP among the major economies in 2009. Even based on the OECD's latest forecast that UK GDP will continue to contract during the second half while the US and Euroland recover, the calendar 2009 fall of 4.7% will be smaller than in Germany (4.8%), Italy (5.2%) and Japan (5.6%).

The projected further UK decline, however, is implausible. June data on services and industrial output already suggest a marginal GDP rise in the third quarter. Recent purchasing managers' surveys are consistent with expansion and stronger than their Eurozone counterparts. Broad money trends are also more favourable in the UK: the 4.9% annualised rise in adjusted M4 between January and July compares with growth of just 0.3% in Eurozone M3.

The OECD bases its UK pessimism partly on the larger role of the financial sector in the economy. Yet the last CBI financial services survey signals that the big recovery in markets since the spring is already contributing to a revival in business volumes, suggesting a positive GDP impact going forward – see chart.

The GDP rises in Germany and France in the second quarter partly reflected temporary "cash for clunkers" effects and pay-back for earlier extreme German weakness. Germany may continue to outperform other EMU members as global trade revives but Euroland as a whole is likely to lag the UK in the coming recovery.