Brown, Köhler stress meeting's recognition of shared interests of global community

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Following are edited excerpts of the press conference held after the meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) on April 29 in Washington. Participating were Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the U.K. Exchequer and Chair of the IMFC, and Horst Köhler, Managing Director of the IMF.

BROWN: Horst Köhler and I are delighted to be able to report on the progress that we have made in the IMFC. The approach to the slowing of the world economy is that we would be both forward looking and outward looking.

There was a general recognition of our shared interests as a global community.We recognized that we should not retreat from cooperation but indeed should strengthen it, and we found a shared approach in the decisions and the recommendations we made. That we should, in facing economic events, be vigilant, but we should be forward looking in creating the conditions for growth, in maintaining the momentum for economic reform in our own national economies, and in continuing the pace of reform in the international financial architecture. And I believe that people will be interested also in the section on trade where we call for the resumption of the multilateral trade talks as important to the development of the world economy.

We also looked at the international development targets and the HIPC [Heavily Indebted Poor Countries] Initiative, and the developing countries and their position, and we agreed about the importance of moving forward with both education and health initiatives in these areas.

On the world economy, we said that while we recognized that the short-term prospects for global growth have weakened significantly since September 2000, we consider it likely that the slowdown will be short-lived, though we noted that the downside risks had increased. Underlying inflationary pressures in general remained subdued.We went on to say: "We will continue to promote international economic cooperation and work together, adopting a forwardlooking approach to meeting our common objectives of open trade for greater global prosperity,maintaining the momentum for reform in the international financial system, strengthening our economies through structural reform,maintaining sound macroeconomic conditions for strong noninflationary growth, and encouraging poverty reduction and growth in the poorest countries."And that is the basis of the shared approach that was adopted by all countries today.

On trade, we urged all countries, developed and developing, to find common ground for the launch of new multilateral trade negotiations this year. The committee is unanimous in its view that recourse to protectionism would be the wrong response to the global economic slowdown and the attendant difficulties in particular sectors.We said that we looked forward to the joint meeting of the Development Committee and the IMFC.We welcome the cooperation of the IMF and the Bank on the international development goals, addressing the importance of delivering on the commitments made at Dakar on education, and the need for global action on health to addresses diseases such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

We also made a number of decisions, ratifying the very positive reforms that Horst Köhler is proposing for improving the crisis prevention mechanisms of the IMF in the world community and improving measures for crisis resolution.We paid particular attention this morning to financial sector reforms.

This was a constructive meeting. There was a shared approach, not simply on the need to be vigilant but also on the conditions that are necessary for growth.This was a positive meeting, which makes me cautiously optimistic about the prospects for the world economy given...