The autumn meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank ended on Saturday with a joint call to do more and better to support global growth that is faltering due to the persistence of trade conflicts and uncertainty. surrounding Brexit. New issues have also emerged this week, with G20 finance ministers directly asking the IMF to take up the Libra case, the highly controversial digital currency of the Facebook social network. The IMF's new managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said on Saturday that members of the Fund had discussed ways to increase "peer pressure" on countries to respect and improve global trade rules in order to reduce trade risks. uncertainties weighing on growth. Trade tensions between the United States and China were a major topic of discussion at the meeting of financial leaders this week, she pointed out. However, “we must look for the reasons why we are not making more progress in trade”, because it is not only the result of the Sino-American conflict, she estimated. Struggling agreements on services and e-commerce “We all know very well that today's economy is much more of a service economy, of e-commerce, but these are areas that trade agreements struggle to cover “, she also commented. "Multilateral cooperation is necessary to reduce trade frictions," said European Central Bank (ECB) boss Mario Draghi. The week was marked by the imposition on Friday of new American customs duties on many European products, including Airbus planes, French wine, Italian cheese and Spanish olive oil. At 3% of global growth this year, “there is no room for political errors”, warned on Tuesday the chief economist of the IMF Gita Gopinath by revealing the latest forecasts of the Fund. Trade in goods and services at half mast And while the recovery was driven by international trade after the 2008 crisis, the volume of goods and services traded will only increase by 1.1% this year. This is the smallest increase since 2012 and a drop from 3.6% in 2018. As the world laments Washington's trade offensives against China and now Europe, US Secretary of Commerce Steven Mnuchin has , he defended American policy. “We are laying the foundations for future growth through fairer trade agreements,” he said in a statement. Besides trade, many IMF member states have expressed concern about the potential repercussions of Facebook's cryptocurrency on their monetary policy sovereignty.

A legal framework for cryptocurrencies

While Libra is expected for 2020, the G7, the group of seven most industrialized countries (Germany, Canada, United States, France, United Kingdom, Italy and Japan) agreed that the sine qua non condition to launch the stable cryptocurrencies, such as Libra, was the establishment of a legal framework. For their part, the G20 finance ministers recommended on Friday to “assess” the risks posed by stable digital currencies, that is to say backed by a basket of currencies such as the euro or the dollar, and to “remedy” them before they are launched. The Japanese presidency of the G20 has also asked the IMF to examine the macroeconomic implications “including issues of monetary sovereignty of member states taking into account the characteristics of the countries”. Kristalina Georgieva stressed on Saturday that the IMF was adopting “a very balanced approach” on this question, examining both the benefits – allowing the greatest number of people to access payment services – and the risks such as the threat to the sovereignty of States. "There could be abuse for illegal purposes and, in the worst case, for the financing of terrorism," she acknowledged, but she stressed "the inevitability" of the expansion of digital currencies. "We will continue to work," she added, "in good conscience." France, Italy and Germany had indicated on Friday that Facebook's future currency was not welcome in Europe. These countries are preparing together a series of measures to ban it on the Old Continent, had also unveiled the French Minister of Finance, Bruno Le Maire, without however revealing these measures. (AFP) The new head of the IMF Kristalina Georgieva (left) and the previous Christine Lagarde (right) at the meeting of the IMF and the World Bank on Saturday in Washington.