International News

SENDAI, Japan,(APP/AFP): Finance ministers and central
bankers from the G7 kicked off meetings in Japan Friday that could highlight a divide among the club of rich nations over currency policy and how to rev up global growth.
The two days of talks will see host Japan keen to win an endorsement
for its position that fiscal stimulus is the way to kickstart the world economy, after a rally in the yen hit the country’s exporters and worsened a slowdown at home.
But Tokyo’s threat of a market intervention to reverse the rally
could put it on a collision course with other G7 nations, including the United States and Germany which have ruled out such moves.
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, attending the talks at a famous
hot spring resort in a region badly damaged by the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster, also waved off the idea of countries gaining a trade advantage by manipulating their own currencies.
“Today we are in a cooperation phase, and not in an intervention or a
currency war phase,” he told AFP.
The G7 group — also including members from Britain, Canada, and
Italy — will try to hammer out a strategy for keeping a global recession at bay.