Foreign media are responsible for spreading confusion about Germany's attitude to the Greek debt problem, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Friday.
Foreign media are responsible for spreading confusion about
Germany
's
attitude to the Greek debt problem, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble
said Friday.
Schaeuble told a press conference that his comments in an interview published
Thursday by the German newspaper Die Welt had been misrepresented by
English-language media to mean that the country would push for an early
restructuring of Greek debt.
He repeated that the 2010 agreement covering the rescue deal agreed by the
European Union, International Monetary Fund and
Greece
required
the sustainability of
Greece
's
debt position to be reviewed every three months, and that the next review is
due in June.
He avoided giving a more direct answer to the question of whether the German
government would urge a restructuring.
Only minutes earlier, German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer had been
quoted by the news agency Bloomberg as saying that a Greek restructuring
"would not be a disaster."
Schaeuble also complained that the German press had misrepresented a report by
the Federal Court of Accounts in quantifying Germany's liability under the
future European Stability Mechanism, which he insisted would be capped at
around EUR190 billion.
Schaeuble was talking before a meeting of finance ministers and central bank
governors from the Group of 20 leading advanced and emerging economies. The
meeting is coinciding with the Spring meetings of the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank.
Schaeuble said
Germany
wanted to draw up a clear plan for the inclusion of new currencies in the IMF's
quasi-currency, the Special Drawing Right, "reflecting the progress to a
multipolar global currency system" and a broader redistribution of
economic weight in the world.
That progress, implying a loss of pre-eminence by the dollar, has alarmed elements
of
US
society. Schaeuble added, however, that he expected the dollar to keep its
"important position, all the more insofar as the
U.S.
can
deal with its problems."
Outgoing Deutsche Bundesbank President Axel Weber, also attending the briefing,
said the process by which emerging markets account for more and more of the
world economy is irreversible and said that "whoever doesn't acknowledge
this is in denial."
Weber endorsed the expansion of the SDR basket, which includes only four
currencies--the dollar, the yen, the euro and sterling--but stressed that full
convertibility is a pre-condition for inclusion.
Weber struck an upbeat note on the outlook for the German economy, saying the
central bank's forecast of 2.5% growth this year is "well insured to the
downside" and adding that gross domestic product could grow by between
0.8% and 1.0% in the first quarter alone, before an inevitable moderation in
the following quarters.
He stressed that
Germany
's
economy, by virtue of its openness, remained dependent on the health of the
world economy, despite a growing contribution to growth from domestic demand. In
this context he drew particular attention to uncertainties arising from the
natural and nuclear disasters in
Japan
, and
from increasing inflationary pressures.
He said that inflation in
Germany
"may top 3%" in some months during the second half of this year,
before moderating.
As reported earlier Friday, inflation in the euro zone rose to 2.7% in
year-on-year terms in March, amid signs that price pressures which started in
the energy and food sectors may be passing through into other sectors.
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