Japan is working closely with the US, its most important ally, to tackle soaring oil and food prices, the main topics of an international meeting starting yesterday, Japan's finance minister said.
“We need to coordinate our actions closely because of the many risk factors,” Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters after meeting US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in Osaka.
The officials are in Osaka for a two-day meeting of finance ministers from the G8 industrialized nations.
Nukaga declined to comment on the specifics of his conversation with Paulson about currencies but acknowledged the topic came up.
“I decline to comment as I usually don’t comment on foreign exchange matters,” he said at an Osaka hall, adding that it was unclear whether currency matters will be on the official agenda at the G8 meeting.
Weakness in the dollar has been a concern lately. It has contributed to the surge in oil prices because some traders invest in oil as a hedge against inflation and a slumping greenback.
The dollar has recovered against the yen and euro after Paulson warned earlier this week that he isn’t ruling out intervening in the currency market to stabilized the currency.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also helped lift the dollar by suggesting the Fed is prepared to raise interest rates to fight inflation.
Nukaga said work was going “smoothly” on an initiative for Climate Investment Funds being administered by the World Bank to provide money for developing nations to battle global warming.
Nukaga also expressed worries about the US economy, gripped by a credit crunch triggered by surge in defaults on risky mortgages.
That’s led to multibillion-dollar losses at financial companies and global market turmoil.
“We must remain vigilant on this still,” he said.
The G8 session — bringing together finance ministers from the US, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada — is one of several ministerial meetings leading up to the July 7 to July 9 leaders’ summit on the northern island of Hokkaido.
The finance ministers were to have dinner with their counterparts and other officials from Australia, Brazil, China, South Korea, South Africa and Thailand to weigh the impact of surging oil and food prices on the global economy, the Ministry of Finance said.
Oil spiked to nearly US$140 a barrel last week, and several Asian countries, including India, Indonesia and Malaysia, have cut fuel subsidies, raising retail prices for millions of consumers.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, a G8 participant, urged nations to work together to provide more information about oil reserves to calm upward pressures on oil prices.
“We need more information,” Lagarde said on the sidelines of the G8 gathering. “We shouldn’t rush into the adoption of measures without having tested them first.”
Meanwhile, the IMF said yesterday a slowdown in the global economy over the next few quarters should tame oil prices.
“The slowdown in growth will influence oil prices” on the downside, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Osaka.
The G8 ministers are expected to push the IMF to study anew how much speculative money is behind soaring oil prices. At a February gathering of finance ministers from the G7 — which excludes Russia — the IMF was asked to check on such speculative flows.
Strauss-Kahn also praised the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank for the way they have handled market turmoil so far, while defending central banks’ focus on inflation.
“Up to now in the subprime crisis, the Fed and the ECB have played their role well ... managing the crisis in the way we would have hoped,” he said.
“Inflation is a serious problem. It’s legitimate that central banks focus all their attention on it,” he said.
In April, the IMF projected global economic growth would slow to 3.7 percent this year from 4.9 percent last year.
The Washington-based institution predicts that the US economy, the world’s largest, will expand just 0.5 percent this year.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS