Group of 20 financial leaders will seek to firm up a plan to rebalance the world economy when they meet this week, looking to beat out how to set national policy goals and make sure everyone keeps to them, officials said Monday.
Sources from the group of rich and developing nations said that talks were unlikely to deal formally with the charged issue of exchange rates, a major focus of interest for financial markets at the meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland.
Leaders of the group agreed at a summit in Pittsburgh in September to come up with policy outlines to ensure a healthier, more sustainable pattern of growth that would head off a recurrence of the last year's economic turmoil.
But it was unclear how those outlines would be judged or enforced, and finance ministers and central bankers meeting from Friday will examine what sort of targets could be set.
Japan's Nikkei daily reported Britain has proposed setting global growth targets to push each nation to set concrete policy goals, but it added that there was opposition to the idea and G20 sources said there was no consensus.
"We'll reaffirm the need to share common policy goals but won't come up with numerical targets," a source told Reuters.
"Each country needs to set medium-term (five years) policy goals which should be consistent with each other. We could use figures such as growth rate, balance of payments, budget deficits, employment here but there's no consensus over what could be used as a common format."
September's agreement did little to deal with global tensions like China's cheap exports and weak yuan currency, Europe's relatively lower consumption or the world's dependence on U.S. consumer spending.
Setting targets for changes in trade balances would be one way to address that, but would also imply changes in currencies that are unlikely to be palatable for many group members.
The Nikkei said that under the British proposal each nation would announce policy goals, such as pledges to continue ultra-easy monetary policy for the foreseeable future, in a bid to correct the imbalances.
The UK Treasury declined to comment on the detail of the Nikkei report, but said:
"The G20 leaders committed to a framework to secure strong sustainable and balanced growth going forward at their meeting in Pittsburgh. The U.K. is focussed on ensuring that the finance ministers' meeting later this week launches the framework and the mutual assessment process which supports it."
The G20 meeting follows Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England meetings this week and a mass of conflicting signals on recovery of the world's major economies.
The Fed, ECB and BoE have all slashed interest rates to historic lows and pumped liquidity into their economies in a bid to temper recession and attention is now turning to when and how fast they will withdraw stimulus.
Some European, particularly French, officials have complained in the run up to the meeting that the strength of the euro against the U.S. dollar is hurting the euro zone economy.
Japanese officials have also said they may become concerned about the strength of the yen and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday he expected there would be "some discussion" about currencies.
But several G20 sources, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, indicated there would not be serious talks this weekend about individual exchange rates.
"It won't be a major topic. But it may be discussed in the broader context of the global economy," one source said.
The G20 will not agree to issue a strong message on exchange rates unless the dollar weakens more sharply from current levels, the source added.
The communique issued by a September summit of G20 leaders in Pittsburgh included a vague call for "market oriented exchange rates that reflect underlying economic fundamentals", but it did not make more specific references to currencies.