IMF chief urges better global policy coordination, tailored reforms

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International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Thursday urged better global policy cooperation and economic reforms that could help tackle specific challenges in both advanced and emerging market economies.

After the outbreak of the financial crisis, there is "really intensive" global cooperation in policy making between 2008 and 2009, but after the crisis abated and global economy embarked on recovery, the degree of urgency calling for cooperation has diminished, Lagarde told reporters.

There is no "one-size-fits-all" economic reform recommendation suitable for all the IMF's 188 member countries, and countries should take different fiscal consolidation paces and set different reform priorities, she said during a roundtable briefing.

Advanced economies including the euro zone still have " significant potential risk," and there should be structural reforms and a banking union "in a comprehensive way" in the currency bloc, she said.

The United States and Japan should anchor their medium-term fiscal consolidation plans including reforming entitlement programs in order to offer the degree of security for the medium term, she suggested.

Emerging market economies have slowed down recently, and each of them should have its own set of policies, she said, adding that countries like India should have more investment and conduct structural reforms to address the bottlenecks curbing its economic growth.

Economic rebalancing "has clearly taken place" in China, she said. In the last couple of years, there has been policy action in China to shift the economic growth driver from domestic investment to domestic consumption, "but we need to see the continuation of that," she stressed.

China's "shadow banking sector needs to continue to be under very solid scrutiny by the authorities," she said.

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