Officials from two dozen rich and emerging economies agreed Saturday to prevent further turbulence in financial markets, which one European official likened to a genie that escaped the bottle.
The joint pledge by a committee of the International Monetary Fund came a day after developing nations implied that the IMF had been lax in spotting the risks that blew up during this year's subprime mortgage crisis in the United States.
Italian Finance Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who chairs the IMF panel, said the problems that emerged in the crisis were "like genies that moved out of the bottle." Regulators and financial companies need to figure out what went wrong and learn lessons, he said.
"This is clearly reason for concern," he told reporters during the twice-yearly meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.
Finance officials on the IMF panel, which includes the Group of Seven leading industrial nations and 18 key emerging countries, pledged Saturday "to analyse the nature of the disturbances and consider lessons to be learned and actions needed to prevent further turbulence."
But their statement masked a sense of discrimination among developing nations that believe the IMF applies tighter standards to them than to rich countries.
In a statement Friday, 24 developing countries called on the fund to strengthen its surveillance of advanced economies, "putting as much focus in evaluating their vulnerabilities as it does in emerging market economies."
Monitoring the global financial system is one task of the 185- nation IMF. Though it has no binding regulatory powers, it has often made enemies in the developing world by linking the aid it gives to countries facing financial crises to stringent belt-tightening reforms. dpa tc cc
