AFP,
Washington: The powerful Group of Seven club will be joined for talks this week by the finance chiefs of Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa, a US Treasury official said Monday.
G7 finance ministers and central bank governors will be joined by their counterparts from the five countries for a working lunch on Friday, before the G7 nations hold their own talks in the afternoon, spokesman Tony Fratto said.
“It's a continuing dialogue with five of the larger emerging market economies,” he said, stressing also the countries' geographical spread across the world.
The G7 nations are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
The contacts over lunch Friday are expected to see the club of wealthy industrialised nations renew pressure on China for greater reform of its currency regime, after the country staged a small revaluation in July.
A source close to the French finance ministry told AFP that the G7 ministers would “underline the need for countries with an overly rigid exchange rate mechanism to make it more flexible”.
A US Treasury official said, without elaborating: “Currencies are part of economics. They are always discussed.”
Yi Gang, assistant governor of the People's Bank of China, was quoted as saying on Monday that the central bank would ensure that the value of the yuan remained stable.
“Policies related to foreign exchange rate reform are in place and will help maintain the yuan's stability,” Yi told the official Securities Times newspaper.
