Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, who was  attending the G20 financial summit, on Saturday called on the international community to take concerted action to overcome the current financial crisis.

Speaking to reporters after the gathering of the Group of 20 biggest developed and developing economies in the world, Aso said that ensuring the stability of financial and capital markets is the first priority of economic policy today.

"A major cause of the current financial crisis is the failure of supervision and regulation conducted by various individual governments to keep up with the innovation and globalization of financial products," he said.

"In this situation, concerted action to make the policy efforts of various countries converge in order to prevent the recurrence of a financial crisis has now become an unavoidable challenge."

The G20 summit on Financial Markets and the Global Economy is a demonstration of the determination to confront global economic turmoil, he said.

Stressing the importance of the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the global financial system, the Japanese premier said Japan is ready to offer US$100 billion to the IMF to assist emerging economies and to support lending to countries hit by the crisis.

The G20, which has been serving as an informal arena to facilitate dialogue between major industrial and emerging-market countries on key issues related to global economic stability, was founded on September 25, 1999 in Washington.

The members of the G20 include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Britain, the United States, the European Union, and the Bretton Woods Institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2008)