IMF caps spring meetings with focus on jobs, growth

WASHINGTON (Xinhua) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Saturday wrapped up its spring meetings with calls for a mix of policies to boost growth and employment worldwide.

The meetings saw a "strong and common recognition that achieving growth and jobs cannot rest on one policy alone," said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, head of the IMF's International Monetary and Fiance Committee.

"No single bullet" exists to whisk the world back to pre-recession levels of employment and growth, he added.

Warning against an overreliance on monetary policy alone to solve the world's economic woes, Shanmugaratnam called for a better blend of monetary, fiscal and structural strategies, with an emphasis on medium-term fiscal and structural reforms.

"There was a very strong desire to see us focus ... on getting growth back to normal," he told a news briefing Saturday. "And a very strong desire to see a return to some normality on jobs" in both emerging and advanced economies.

ASIA LEADS THREE-SPEED GLOBAL RECOVERY

Earlier this week, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said the global economy has entered a "three-speed recovery": Emerging economies are faring well, countries including the United States are on the mend, and the euro zone and Japan are not yet out of the woods.

This latest picture features rapid growth among emerging economies, with developing Asian countries and sub-Saharan Africa leading the pack with 75 percent growth over the last five years.

After a year of stifled performance, overall Asian growth is set to pick up steam this year and hit 5.75 percent, up by half a percentage point from the previous year.

In China, growth is on track with earlier predictions, at a rapid clip of around 8 percent this year, and is projected to pick up to 8.25 percent next year.

Japan's stimulus is expected to help sustain growth at 1.5 percent this year, the IMF said.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Barry Bosworth echoed ongoing IMF recommendations that export-led countries, especially those in Asia, boost domestic demand from newly wealthy consumers to shore up their economies against the crisis-riddled West.

"The lesson for the emerging markets is to reduce their reliance on exports to the global market and shift to greater emphasis on development of their domestic markets," the former White House economist told Xinhua. "That is what China has been trying to do."

US URGED TO SLOW SPENDING CUTS

The IMF earlier this week urged Washington to adjust the pace of spending cuts, predicting that the sequester - a spate of automatic spending cuts that kicked off on March 1 - would slow US growth by 0.5 percent.

Lagarde last week told US media that the country should cut spending somewhat but avoid making the cuts too massive or brutal.

But Bosworth contended that current US government policies should remain unchanged, arguing the IMF contributed to problems by pushing for fiscal restraint too quickly after the financial crisis.

American Enterprise Institute researcher Daniel Hanson contended that the IMF's recommendations were self-contradictory.

"There was criticism of both austerity and fiscal largesse," he told Xinhua. "If you don't want the US to cut spending, but you also want them to have less debt, then what exactly do you want them to do?"

EUROPE STUCK IN THE DOLDRUMS

The euro zone will see little to no growth, with the economies of Greece and Spain in tatters amid massive unemployment. Cleaning up the region's troubled banking system is among IMF's top concerns, and the IMF has called for recapitalizing, restructuring or - where necessary - shutting down banks.

Bosworth contended that the banking system fixes are moving too slowly, arguing that Europe's banks are under-capitalized and that the European Central Bank and individual governments are not acting quickly enough.