news-world_economy_getting_back_to

AFP - 12 January 2010
World Economy getting back to normal

BASEL, Switzerland (AFP) - – Emerging economies are driving a global economic recovery, the head of the ECB said Monday after central bankers concluded that the world economy was returning to normality.

"At a global level ... there is a confirmation of the progressive normalisation of the economy," European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet said on behalf of the central bank chiefs.

During their first quarterly meeting of the year at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bankers confirmed that a global economic recovery was under way.

"We are in the recovery mode, that is something that is very much due to the emerging economies," Trichet said.

Those economies had "demonstrated resilience," and were "very, very clearly in a more dynamic mode now," the ECB chief told reporters.

The assessment marked an upbeat beginning to 2010, two months after the influential group of central bankers said the world had pulled out of economic freefall but still faced risks that could knock confidence.

However, Trichet warned that commercial banks must ensure that they clean up their balance sheets in the wake of the financial crisis and credit crunch that precipitated the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"We are telling our banks that they have to do themselves, everything to reinforce their balance sheet by all appropriate means," he said.

That included "putting aside their own profit" and being "moderate in remuneration behaviour," he added, amid an ongoing debate over pay and bonuses at banks that are feared as being so large as to present a risk to the entire financial system and economy if they run into trouble.

Trichet also added a note of caution about the risk of inflation, especially in the emerging economies leading the recovery.

"Anchoring solidly price stability in the medium- and long-run is essential for the stability of our economies and for the recovery," he explained, The central bankers met the heads of the several major commercial banks at the BIS over the weekend to underline the need for a sound financial system to prop up long-term growth.

They said that they hoped that new international standards aimed at bolstering the banking industry's ability to weather future financial crises would be finalised by the end of this year.

"Timely completion of the Basel Committee reform programme is critical to achieving a more resilient banking system that can support sound economic growth over the long-term," Trichet said in a statement released by the BIS.

Leading central bankers and national regulators in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said last month that they were aiming to strengthen financial requirements on banks by the end of 2012, once their proposals were refined and tested this year.

The reforms, which have been in the offing for several months, are part of the international response to the crisis triggered by the collapse in financial markets and several major banks over the past two years.

The head of the Financial Stability Board, Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi, on Saturday warned that the financial system still remained very fragile despite a clear improvement.