'Don't feed speculation'

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Saturday called for "bold and ambitious" action to bolster the global economy's slowing recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, emphasizing the need for financial sector reform and increased investment in infrastructure.

"A number of countries face the prospect of low or slowing growth with unemployment remaining unacceptably high," the IMF's policy steering body said in its communiqué on behalf of the organization's 188 member states.

The IMF cut its global growth forecast this week to 3.3 percent from 3.4 percent. It's the fourth time this year that the fund has made a downward correction. The IMF expressed particular concern about the "tentative" recovery in the European Union's currency union, called the eurozone.

'Don't feed speculation'

But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (pictured) dismissed suggestions that the eurozone risked sliding back into recession. The 18-member currency union has been fighting for four years to emerge from a debt crisis that erupted in Greece and then spread to other countries.

"There's no reason to talk the global economy into a crisis," Schläuble said. "We don't have any reason to feed dramatic speculations."

The German finance minister told the IMF that the eurozone had made significant progress, with the financial markets showing growing confidence in the euro again and many of the bloc's crisis countries slowly exiting recession.

Schäuble said that although geopolitical turmoil in Ukraine and the Middle East had hurt economic confidence worldwide, there's still "somewhat satisfying growth" overall.

slk/av (AFP, dpa, Reuters)