More Needed to Revive Global Economy, Says IMF
| Position | IMF Survey online |
More still needs to be done to revive the global economy and pull it out of recession, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.
Addressing the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on April 16, Strauss-Kahn noted three areas for urgent action-cleansing bank balance sheets of toxic assets, continuing with fiscal stimulus in 2010 to revive the world economy, and providing financial support to countries under pressure.
Looking forward, he called for improvements in the national and international financial architecture in four key areas: better regulation, better economic surveillance, better financing arrangements, and better international cooperation.
On the same day, the IMF released background research on the crisis as part of its World Economic Outlook. Two features of the current recession-its association with deep financial crisis and its highly synchronized nature-suggest that it is likely to be unusually severe and followed by a slow recovery, according to the research.
Strauss-Kahn said that the freefall in the global economy may be starting to abate, with a recovery emerging in 2010, but this depends crucially on the right policies being adopted today.
Leaders of the Group of Twenty (G-20) industrialized and emerging market economies, meeting in London on April 2, announced a series of actions to combat the crisis, including boosting the IMF's lendable resources to $750 billion. "I was impressed by the appreciation of leaders for the seriousness of the global recession, and by their genuine commitment to take action. The real winner is the global economy," Strauss-Kahn told reporters.
The IMF will hold its Spring Meetings with the World Bank in Washington on April 25-26 when the world's financial leaders will take note of the IMF's latest forecasts for the global economy and review action taken to counter the crisis. The IMF publishes its next forecast on April 22, with a review of financial markets published in its Global Financial Stability Report the previous day.
As part of a reform of its lending facilities agreed in March, the IMF created a new credit line for strongly performing economies that needed insurance to protect them from crisis fallout. The IMF's Executive Board is due to consider applications from Mexico and Poland to tap the credit line.
Strauss-Kahn...
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