(FT) -- Leaders from the G20 group of leading economies will next month seek to agree specific guidelines on reducing global trade imbalances, in a fresh attempt to head off a potential "currency war".
Finance ministers and central bank governors, meeting this weekend in the South Korean city of Gyeongju, agreed on a policy framework to contain large current account surpluses and deficits, but a proposal to set specific targets ran into opposition.
The dollar traded near a one-week low against the euro or $1.3997 against the single currency in Asian time trading after the meeting, before coming back .
The meeting also announced significant progress in reforming the International Monetary Fund, shifting power away from Europe and towards emerging nations like China and Brazil.
Analyst reaction was muted. Eswar Prasad, a former IMF official now at Cornell University in the US, said a previous attempt to impose tougher IMF surveillance of current account imbalances had achieved little while the threat of such monitoring was unlikely to trigger policy changes in countries with large surpluses and deficits.
Todd Elmer, of Citigroup, said: "The meeting produced little pressure for the US to back away from its accommodative stance which has fuelled dollar depreciation, it does not call more strongly for increased flexibility in Asia and it appears to leave an out for some countries, like Japan, to pursue intervention or capital controls".
CNN
