Group of 20 financial leaders will seek to firm up a plan to rebalance the world economy when they meet this week, looking to beat out how to set national policy goals and make sure everyone keeps to them, officials said on Monday.

Sources from the group of rich and developing nations said that talks were unlikely to deal formally with the charged issue of exchange rates, a major focus of interest for financial markets at the meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Leaders of the group agreed at a summit in Pittsburgh in September to come up with policy outlines to ensure a healthier, more sustainable pattern of growth that would head off a recurrence of the last year’s economic turmoil.

But it was unclear how those outlines would be judged or enforced, and finance ministers and central bankers meeting from Friday will examine what sort of targets could be set.

Japan’s Nikkei daily reported Britain has proposed setting global growth targets to push each nation to set concrete policy goals, but it added that there was opposition to the idea and G20 sources said there was no consensus.

“We’ll reaffirm the need to share common policy goals but won’t come up with numerical targets,” a source told Reuters.

“Each country needs to set medium-term (five years) policy goals which should be consistent with each other. We could use figures such as growth rate, balance of payments, budget deficits, employment here but there’s no consensus over what could be used as a common format.”

September’s agreement did little to deal with global tensions like China’s cheap exports and weak yuan currency, Europe’s relatively lower consumption or the world’s dependence on U.S. consumer spending.

Setting targets for changes in trade balances would be one way to address that, but would also imply changes in currencies that are unlikely to be palatable for many group members.

The Nikkei said that under the British proposal each nation would announce policy goals, such as pledges to continue ultra-easy monetary policy for the foreseeable future, in a bid to correct the imbalances.

The UK Treasury declined to comment on the detail of the Nikkei report, but said:

“The G20 leaders committed to a framework to secure strong sustainable and balanced growth going forward at their meeting in Pittsburgh.

“The UK is focused on ensuring that the finance ministers’ meeting later this week launches the framework and the mutual assessment process which supports it.” Hard money training

Tags: Economic Turmoil, economy, financial leaders, financial markets, g20

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