Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies promised on Saturday to support the agreement reached by leaders of the G-G20 countries to tackle the financial crisis.

In a joint statement issued on Saturday during the APEC leaders' meeting in the Peruvian capital, the leaders said they "welcome the Washington Declaration of the leaders of the Group of Twenty at their Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy and strongly support the common principles that will guide the Action Plan for financial markets reform."

"In this regard, we strongly support the broad policy response needed to restore global economic growth and stability through: closer macroeconomic cooperation; avoiding negative spillovers; supporting emerging and developing economies; and comprehensively reforming and strengthening the IFIs (international financial institutions) to reflect the increasing voice and representation of emerging and developing economies and be more responsive to future challenges,"said the statement.

The leaders reiterated their "firm belief that free market principles, and open trade and investment regimes, will continue to drive global growth, employment and poverty reduction."

They recognized that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and other multilateral development banks have a critical role in assisting economies affected by the financial crisis and require sufficient and readily available resources.

The IMF, they said, with its focus on surveillance, should strengthen collaboration with other IFIs, enhancing efforts to integrate regulatory and supervisory responses into the macro-prudential policy framework and conduct early warning exercises.

"We endorse the APEC Finance Ministers' encouragement for our economies, where applicable, to participate in the IMF/World Bank Financial Sector Assessment Program taking into account the level of development and the specific conditions of each member economy.

Nineteen 19 leaders from the APEC member economies attended the two-day summit that began Saturday afternoon.

(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2008)