No 'magic bullet' for world economic imbalances: Rato

SINGAPORE: The IMF wants to boost its role in surveillance of the world economy but there is no "magic bullet" to reduce global imbalances, IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato said on Friday.

The International Monetary Fund, which holds its annual meeting in Singapore next week, is discussing ways to reshape its role and has already started multilateral consultations to complement its single-country studies.

"Our first multilateral consultation focuses on narrowing global payments (trade) imbalances while maintaining global growth," Rato told reporters.

The IMF has already held bilateral discussions with participants in the consultation: China, the euro area, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States with a view to tackling the large US trade deficit and Asian surpluses.

"I'd like to emphasize an important point: global imbalances are a complex problem that took many years to build up. It would be unrealistic to expect the problem to be resolved through a magic bullet," said Rato.