Ottawa: G20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Australia this weekend will likely discuss what Europe can do to stimulate growth, and it will be natural to turn to Germany to do its part, a senior Canadian official has said.
The official said the G20, the Group of 20 leading industrialised nations, would discuss the insufficiency of near-term demand. But he said it was strongly committed to fiscal sustainability, so it would be unlikely to call on countries to reverse progress that has been made on that front.
Instead, the representatives would look at what space exists for countries to do more, said the official.
A senior US Treasury official said Washington would push Europe to do more, with Germany singled out for its large current account surplus as a nation that spends and imports more. G20 meetings always discuss foreign exchange, the Canadian official said, adding that the general view in the G20 is that the US dollar had risen at least in part because of the improvement of the US economy.
