Bereft of a quick fix to ward off recession, the world's leading finance ministers on Saturday voiced confidence in stronger growth and committed to deep-seated reforms for rich and poor regions as the remedy.
Meeting for the first time since the end of the war in Iraq, ministers from the G7 powers and Russia discussed but broke little ground on debt relief, terror funds, financial stability and links with the developing world, in preparation for a summit of heads of state in two weeks time in Evian.
Despite fears of imminent recession in many G7 countries, concerns about Japanese-style deflation spreading across the globe and the recent slide in the US dollar, ministers said that many downside risks had receded.
"We're optimistic more than anything else," French Finance Minister and G7 host Francis Mer told a news conference.
The statement at the end of the two-day gathering on Saturday provided a "to do" list of ongoing reforms for each country to pursue in order to create a better environment for the private sector to lead economic recovery.
The G7 said there was optimism economies would improve soon without the need for any emergency action and officials told reporters there was some hope business and consumer confidence would improve following the end of the war in Iraq.
The G7 countries -- the US, Canada, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany and host France -- said dangers to global growth and prosperity were receding but challenges remained.
The US said it would encourage job creation by urging more savings and investment by individuals and companies. European nations said they would continue to work for more flexible economies via reforms of labor, product and capital markets.
Japan, grappling with a fresh crisis at one of its leading banks just as the G7 met, emphasized financial sector reform and the need to fight deflation.
The lack of concrete action may reflect the fact that the main goal of the meeting was to tee-up next month's summit in the French town of Evian, where French President Jacques Chirac wants more vocal commitments to bridging the gap with Africa and other impoverished parts of the world.
The ministers also addressed issues of better-organized lending structures for developing and middle-income countries.
In a new initiative, G7 ministers asked the Paris Club of creditor nations to find more flexible ways of dealing with the debt problems of countries with big repayment troubles in a move that could be applied to post-war Iraq.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS