Global Finance Leaders Grapple with New World Order

15/05/2001| IslamWeb

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The guardians of the global economy ended three days of meetings on Sunday with plans to bolster world output battered by the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and choke off funding for terrorists.The meetings yielded some solid results, with the world's advanced economies promising to cut interest rates further if they had to in order to revive flagging growth.
``It's a different world after Sept. 11,'' India's Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said at the closing news briefing.
``It's a more integrated world with a greater awareness that we must be able to stand together, developed as well as developing countries, because alienation, poverty, degradation, violence, anger, impatience anywhere is a threat to peace and prosperity ... everywhere,'' said Sinha, outgoing chairman of the World Bank's policy-setting Development Committee.
And if there was any doubt a concerted effort was needed to improve the global economic outlook, the International Monetary Fund issued bleak forecasts, painting a grim picture with growth grinding slower in almost every part of the globe. But the IMF insisted the storm clouds would clear by next year.
Despite the show of unity by rich countries promising to keep the world economy afloat and not be beaten by terrorism, disputes were evident in many items on the weekend's agenda.
The IMF declared the U.S. economy to be in a ``mild recession,'' but that forecast was called too pessimistic by the world's richest economy. And Europe's two largest economies, Germany and France, also insisted they would outperform the lender's guess. One Canadian official said IMF forecasts should be ``taken with a grain of salt.''