Some had hoped the IMF would adopt a leading role in that effort, helping coordinate the efforts of various watchdogs. But the communique suggested the fund is shunning the role of global policeman, for now at least.
The IMF will make every effort to help, but only within "its mandate and expertise" -- language indicative of keeping the status quo rather than taking a new leading role.
Given the bleaker global economic outlook after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the IMF reiterated it stands ready to help emerging market economies with "sound policies."
Even before hijacked airplanes felled the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, the world economy was on shaky ground. But the attacks severely dented the tourism and insurance industries as well as hurting consumer confidence, raising fears of the first global recession since the early 1990s.
The IMF has already slashed its growth forecasts, predicting what some say amounts to a global recession. The lender now expects world growth of 2.4 percent this year and next, about half the 4.7 percent seen last year, and a level seen by most private economists as recessionary.
Those latest IMF estimates were much lower than the 2.6 percent growth for this year and 3.5 percent for next year that it forecast in a September report compiled too late to gauge the full impact of the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Saturday, the IMF gave more a more detailed picture, which saw economic forecasts being slashed in almost every country on earth.
But German and French officials said they would stick to their own growth forecasts despite the IMF's bleaker view, which the United States has already dismissed as far too pessimistic.
US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said the American economy remains sound and that recovery to a stronger pace of expansion should be apparent by early next year -- something much needed if the global economy is to shake its slump.
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