High and volatile oil price is one of major risks to world economy, and countries need to stress the need to increase investment, production and refining capacity, top financial officials of the world's leading economies said Sunday.

Financial ministers and central bank governors attending the G-20 meeting urged more cooperation and dialogues between oil suppliers and consumers and enhancement of oil market transparency to improve market efficiency.

"The actual level of prices is going to stay for reasons of demand and also for some reasons of supply", said Rodrigo De Rato, Managing Director of IMF. "All economies have to face the situation and the situation can produce different problems in terms of inflation."

Oil price fell sharply in a row after it hit a record high of 70.85 US dollars in August. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, fell 45 cents to close at 62.63 dollars a barrel. In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for November delivery sank 79 cents to 59.35 dollars a barrel.

Rodrigo De Rato added that authorities should be vigilant in this respect because higher oil prices can produce some consequences in terms of growth.

"As an oil producer, Argentina fortunately need not to worry about the high oil price", said Martin Redrado, governor of Argentina's Central Bank, in the interview with Xinhua. He predicted that the level of oil price was expected to stay high in a certain space of time.

Lavagna said that we can react to higher oil prices by two ways. One is to ensure the reserve of crude oil and the other is to find alternative resources. He took for example his country's use of corn as raw material to find new energy resources and promotion of solar energy.

"Argentina stabilized the domestic price of oil by increasing the export tariff of oil and cutting the crude oil export to the international market," said Roberto Lavagna, minister of Economy of Argentina said in the interview with Xinhua.

"Oil producers can begin to increase investment in new facilities even when excess capacity is very limited, while Oil-consuming countries need to start increasing refining capacity and to take measure to curb oil demand, such as improving conservation and energy efficiency," said Rodrigo De Rato.

Wrapping up the G-20 meeting, Jin Renqing, finance minister of China, stressed the importance of promoting energy conservation and efficiency and developing alternative and renewable resources. ()

Source: Xinhua