Group of Seven (G-7) finance ministers and central bank governors plan to hold a two-day meeting in Ottawa in early February as the world's seven major industrial powers grope for economic policies to put the wobbly world economy back on its feet.
According to news reports from Canada, the G-7 meeting is slated to take place Feb. 8-9.
The top G-7 finance officials, who last met in October in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, will be facing a world economy in disarray.
Official US government data show the US economy has plunged into a recession, while the Japanese economy has been gripped by a deflationary spiral that has shown little signs of an immediate turn-around.
The economic woes of Argentina, which faces an imminent default on foreign debts, are also likely to figure high on the G-7 agenda.
Japan's G-7 partners are likely to press the Japanese government to further relax monetary policy and rein in the bad debts in Japanese banks that have weighed down on the Japanese banking system.
The continuous decline in the value of the yen is also expected to be a major focus at the upcoming meeting of the seven industrial powers -- the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada.
The meeting would put pressure on the G-7 monetary and financial authorities to coordinate their financial and fiscal policies to cope with the uncertainties in the world economy.
( January 4, 2002)
