Following a two-day summit in Pittsburgh, the US state of Pennsylvania, leaders from the Group of 20 (G20) countries on Friday tried to lay groundwork for a sustainable, balanced global economic growth with a joint statement about their coordinated economic policy positions.

Exit strategy

As people around the world are anxiously awaiting a coordinatedG20 exit strategy, G20 leaders ruled out any short-term strategies, saying that they agreed to maintain the current stimulus measures to support economic activity until recovery is fully assured.

The growth of the global economy and the success of coordinated effort to respond to the recent crisis have increased the case for more sustained and systematic international cooperation, said the Leaders' Statement issued after the summit's conclusion on Friday afternoon.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that world economic growth will resume this year after the most severe global financial crisis in decades.

Most of the world's advanced and emerging market economies have adopted stimulus measures to counter the impact of the sweeping financial and economic crisis, according to an analysis by the IMF, which estimates the collective impact on growth to be around a quarter to a half of one point.

"In the short-run, we must continue to implement our stimulus programs to support economic activity until recovery clearly has taken hold," said the Leaders' Statement.

Leaders from the G20 countries, which represent 85 percent of the world economy, also agreed to develop a transparent and credible process for withdrawing their extraordinary fiscal, monetary and financial sector support when time is ripe for an exit strategy.

"We task our Finance Ministers, working with input from the IMF and FSB (Financial Stability Board), at their November meeting to continue developing cooperative and coordinated exit strategies recognizing that the scale, timing and sequencing of this process will vary across countries or regions and across the type of policy measures," said the statement.

"Credible exit strategies should be designed and communicated clearly to anchor expectations and reinforce confidence," it added.

Framework for growth

The G20 leaders have committed to additional steps to ensure strong, sustainable, and balanced growth, to build a stronger international financial system, to reduce development imbalances, and to modernize architecture for international economic cooperation.

To achieve this goal, the G20 countries will implement responsible fiscal policies, attentive to short-term flexibility considerations and longer-run sustainability requirements.

Meanwhile, all G20 members agreed to address the respective weaknesses of their economies, and bear primary responsibility forthe sound management of the economy.

The G20 members will also set out their medium-term policy frameworks and will work together to assess the collective implications of their national policy frameworks for the level and pattern of global growth, and to identify potential risks to financial stability.

The leaders called on finance ministers and central bank governors to launch the new framework by November by initiating a cooperative process of mutual assessment of policy frameworks and the implications of those frameworks for the pattern and sustainability of global growth.

"We believe that regular consultations, strengthened cooperation on macroeconomic policies, the exchange of experiences on structural policies, and ongoing assessment will promote the adoption of sound policies and secure a healthy global economy," said the leaders in their joint statement.

(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2009)