Follow up of London Summit:

Group 20 to fine-tune crisis responses

US: The finance officials of the Group of 20 developed and developing countries meet here Friday to try to fine-tune their responses to the global economic crisis after the London G20 summit.

The meeting will be preceded by that of the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of Seven, which traditionally gather on the eve of International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.

In a speech Wednesday previewing these meetings, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, their host, did not mention once the G7, a longstanding forum of advanced economies: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

By contrast, Geithner spoke several times about the G20, a relatively new grouping, created 10 years ago, that includes the G7, the European Union, and Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.

Much like the last G7 meeting in Washington in October, the United States, the world’s largest economy and the epicenter of the crisis, struck a collegial tone, avoiding any hint of the economic lessons it had been fond of giving in the past.

“The rest of the world needs the US economy and financial system to recover in order for it to revive. ... Just as importantly, we need the rest of the world to recover if we are to prosper again here at home,”

Geithner told the Economic Club of Washington.

“The world economy is going through the most severe crisis in generations. We each face somewhat different challenges and thus are not all in the same boat. But we are all in the same storm,” said the treasury secretary, urging countries to work together to combat the crisis.

“We bear a substantial share of the responsibility for what has happened,” he admitted.

The G20 and G7 meetings come in the context of grim IMF forecasts for a sharp drop in global output.

The IMF projects the global economy will contract 1.3 percent this year and grow only 1.9 percent in 2010 in its World Economic Outlook report published Wednesday. Geithner said the G20 and G7 meetings Friday would offer “a good opportunity to follow up” on the decisions of the London summit on April 2.

The leaders of the G20, whose members produce more than 85 percent of the world’s output, agreed to cooperate closely to kick-start the moribund global economy and reform financial institutions. Washington, Friday, AFP