The head of the International Monetary Fund in an interview out Saturday urged G20 leaders meeting next week for a crunch summit to put tackling global imbalances near the top of their priorities. Dominique Strauss-Kahn told the Financial Times that the G20 must put "some steam" behind the issue.
"We need to have rebalancing of growth and increase in consumption in the emerging markets to have enough growth in the short-term," he said. "We also need to define what the long-term growth model will be." He added: "Multilateral consultations have been held on this topic with conclusions accepted on all sides and nothing happened... we need the G20 to put some steam behind this."
Many Western countries are keen to look at ways of addressing global imbalances - in particular the issue of the US''s large current account deficit and China''s surplus. Leaders from the richest and leading emerging economies are meeting in Pittsburgh in the United States on 24 and 25 September for a summit which will grapple with how to prevent a recurrence of the recent global economic crisis.