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Global financial chiefs gather in Washington this week to take stock of a world economy that appears to be shrugging off a housing-led slowdown in the United States.
However, currency rates will again stoke debate among finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven nations, who meet Friday ahead of the annual spring gathering of the IMF and World Bank at the weekend.
"Discussion on exchange rates is likely to include the yen, the dollar, the euro and the (Chinese) yuan," Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi said last Friday.
But the G7 industrialised nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - "will not particularly focus on the yen" at their meeting, Omi told reporters in Tokyo.
The G7 ministers opted for a relatively soft line on the sliding Japanese yen at their February meeting in Germany despite European concerns about the currency's weakness, which is hurting eurozone exporters.
Omi said the finance chiefs will also discuss the health of the global economy and the future of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Under its Spanish managing-director Rodrigo Rato, the six-decade-old Fund is trying to overhaul its historic role as a lender of last resort to countries embroiled in financial crisis.
Ten years after crisis swept through East Asian economies, the IMF is seen as less relevant to fast-emerging powers like China, whose build-up of huge currency reserves has made the country far less reliant on outside help.
At annual talks in September, the IMF raised the voting power of China and three other countries - South Korea, Mexico and Turkey - but it faces disquiet from several European and developing nations about deeper reform.
This Wednesday, the IMF publishes its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) report, replete with detailed forecasts for growth among its 185 members.
According to a report in the Financial Times Deutschland, the IMF is set to forecast US growth in 2007 of 2.2 percent and 2.8 percent next year. That would be down from 3.3 percent last year.
The business newspaper said the IMF report would forecast world growth of 4.9 percent this year and 4.8 percent next. The IMF's new chief economist, Simon Johnson, believes the United States will avert recession and "bounce back pretty quickly" from its housing slowdown, while the rest of the global economy is in good shape.
"If the United States sneezes, you should worry about other parts of the world catching cold. But at the moment, other parts of the world are healthy," he told a news conference last week.
"The US is a significant part of the (global) economy ... but it's not by any means the whole story," Johnson stressed. "The contribution of China and India and other emerging markets is definitely positive."
In a pre-released section of the WEO, the IMF said that some of the world's economic imbalances may be corrected as the dollar's value declines. Last week the dollar slumped to a two-year low against the euro.
The massive US trade gap - of 763.6 billion dollars in 2006 - has been among key concerns for finance officials as surpluses and currency reserves mount in countries such as China.
But the US current account deficit is already looking better, Johnson said. "It looks like that part of the global imbalances has turned the corner," he said.
Under-fire World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz meanwhile will be under the spotlight this weekend as he presses ahead with a controversial campaign to clean up corruption in the bank's lending.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2007

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