G7 persen voor sterkere yuan
ISTANBOEL (Reuters) - de Groep van Zeven rijke naties spoorde China op Zaterdag aan om yuan te versterken, maar gaf geen teken van hoe het Chinese weerstand tegen die suggestie zou kunnen overwinnen of andere spanningen meer dan globale munttarieven oplossen. G7 overheerste economische beleidsvorming voor twee decennia, maar de vergadering van de Zaterdag onderstreepte dat het globale problemen zonder de samenwerking van snelgroeiende economieën in de ontwikkelende wereld zoals China kon niet meer oplossen. G7 Ministers van Financiën en de centrale bankiers, in een verklaring nadat zij in Istanboel samenkwamen, zeiden Peking zijn strak gecontroleerde munt zou moeten opvoeren om correcte onevenwichtigheid in globale handel te helpen, die is beschuldigd van het van brandstof voorzien van de financiële crisis.
„Wij stemmen in met de voortdurende verplichting van China om zich aan een flexibelere wisselkoers te bewegen, die tot voortdurende appreciatie van Renminbi in efficiënte termen zou moeten leiden en de hulp de evenwichtigere groei in China en in de wereldeconomie bevordert,“ bovengenoemde G7. Maar China, terwijl het aandringen het is aan vrij uiteindelijk omhoog yuan van plan, heeft gehouden de munt hoofdzakelijk tegen de dollar vlak aangezien de globale financiële crisis begon verergerend in Juli 2008. De Verwoording van de G7- verklaring op munttarieven was identiek aan gebruikte taal toen groeps laatste ontmoet zes maanden geleden. China toonde geen teken op Zaterdag van het aandacht besteden van de aan druk van G7. „Ons wisselkoersbeleid is zeer duidelijk,“ Yi Troep, een Chinese gouverneur van de centrale bankondeugd die in Istanboel voor vergaderingen van het Internationale Monetaire Fonds, vertelde Reuters was. Hij zei het beleid stabiliteit zou blijven benadrukken.
Gevraagd of China meer druk van andere landen onder ogen had gezien om yuan te laten waarderen, zei hij: „Wij zullen ons beleid voortzetten dat.“ plaatst G7 gaf ook geen teken van het breken van nieuwe grond in het oplossen van spanningen onder zijn leden over zwakheid van de dollar, die ongeveer 12 percenten tegen een handel-gewogen mand sinds Maart heeft gedepreci�ërd. France and Canada have expressed concern in recent weeks that a weak dollar could hurt their exports. A G7 official, who declined to be named, said there was heated discussion of this issue in Istanbul. But Saturday’s G7 statement offered nothing new to allay concern over dollar weakness, merely repeating language used six months ago, that too much volatility in exchange rates tended to threaten economic stability. DECLINING POWER The G7, comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, has been eclipsed during the financial crisis by the larger Group of 20, which includes rising powers such as China and India. Meeting in Pittsburgh last month, leaders of the G20 agreed in principle to work toward cutting global imbalances and to tighten financial regulation.
“The G7 is not quite dead, but it is losing its relevance,” the IMF’s managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was quoted as saying by Emerging Markets magazine. “It’s on its way to extinction.” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the G7 would keep playing a “pivotal role” in global economic cooperation, and that Canada would host a meeting of top G7 finance officials next February. But many officials, while saying the group still had a purpose, conceded that its role would have to change as the G20 took the lead in managing the global recovery. “We have agreed to work on a more informal basis, that we step back to the way it was some years ago, and that we want to try to cut back the schedules for (numbers of) meetings,” German deputy finance minister Joerg Asmussen said. RECOVERY The G7 stressed that the world’s economic recovery remained vulnerable to setbacks, despite the IMF’s forecasts of growth across much of the G7 and elsewhere in the second half of this year and in 2010. Poor U.S. economic data earlier in the week cast doubt on the strength of the recovery. The Labor Department announced on Friday that the U.S. unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September from 9.7 percent in August. “In recent months we have started to see signs of a global economic recovery and continued improvement in financial market conditions,” the G7 statement said. “However, there is no room for complacency since the prospects for growth remain fragile and labor market conditions are not yet improving. We will keep in place our support measures until recovery is assured.” German Bundesbank President Axel Weber said Europe’s biggest economy would take years to recoup the growth lost since gross domestic product started to contract there and in most of Europe in the second quarter of last year. “We will return around 2013 to the economic level we had 2008,” he told reporters. “Because of the finance crisis, the German growth potential seems to have decreased to around 1 percent compared to around 1.5 percent before.” British finance minister Alistair Darling said that to avoid future crises, the G20 needed to ensure countries around the world met minimum standards in their financial regulation, so that weakness in one nation could not cause problems for others. In an interview with Emerging Markets magazine, Darling said the G20 might blacklist countries that had lax regulation and impose sanctions on them, mirroring its crackdown on tax havens, which was launched earlier this year and has already prompted some countries to roll back banking secrecy laws.
(With reporting by Louise Egan, Simon Rabinovitch, Anna Willard, Gavin Jones, Sumeet Desai and Leika Kihara; Editing by Andrew Torchia)
