Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers and central bank chiefs pose for a family photo during the G7 finance ministers meeting, in Essen, western Germany, Saturday.

ESSEN, Germany, Feb. 11--Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers and central bank chiefs said Saturday that global economic growth was “more balanced“ and that the performance of the major economies “remains favorable“.
“Global growth is more balanced,“ the world finance chiefs said in the final communique issued at the end of their two-day G7 summit here, AFP said.
“In our economies, performance remains favorable.“ The United States economy was “experiencing solid activity, while adjusting to a more sustainable growth path,“ the statement continued.
Canada and Britain “remain on a strong and balanced growth path.
The euro area is experiencing an increasingly broad-based upswing. Japan’s recovery is on track and is expected to continue.“
“Amid lower energy prices and moderating inflationary pressures, risks have abated,“ the statement said.
“But we will remain vigilant. We will continue to pursue sound policies to foster sustained and balanced growth and support the orderly adjustment of global imbalances,“ the G7 vowed.
And it added: “In this respect, we welcome China’s commitment to rebalance growth.“
Chinese officials had attended the meeting here.
Meanwhile, China joined the Group of Seven nations for talks on the global economy on Saturday, marking an effective expansion of the club which may also admit other emerging economic powerhouses to almost double its size.
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, chairing the meeting of G7 finance officials in Essen, Germany, believes the world’s traditional economic giants can no longer hold effective talks on the global economy without other countries.
The G7 encompasses Germany, the United States, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. Russia joins the group to form the G8--usually to discuss political issues. Steinbrueck said on Friday that Russia should play a full part in G7 talks.
“It does not make sense to have the Russian Federation not as a full member at the table,“ he told a news conference.
“There are a lot of topics that cannot be discussed without the important emerging market countries like China, India, South Africa, Australia, to name a few,“ he said. “I think that one should have them at the table.“
“It’s not a formalized process, but in my opinion, this G7-G8 meeting will be expanded to include this circle, and in the sense of full membership,“ Steinbrueck added.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11--Global politicians and business leaders aim to turn the unfertile territory of Washington into a hotbed of action against climate change this week.
According to AFP, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be among those addressing a two-day forum on Capitol Hill that comes at a time when scientific warnings about the catastrophic potential of global warming are reaching a fever pitch.
“The science has become more clear, more certain and more urgent,“ says British Environment Secretary David Miliband, who will attend the forum at the US Senate along with World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz.
“There’s a major shift in the science and there’s a major shift in the way that this issue is conceived,“ he told reporters on a conference call.
The Republican administration of US President George W. Bush insists that it takes the issue of man-made climate change seriously, but remains opposed to endorsing the Kyoto treaty against global warming.
Heavyweight US senators including 2008 presidential contenders Joe Biden (Democrat) and John McCain (Republican) will speak at the forum to drive home the message that not everyone in the United States opposes action.
With the Democrats back in control of Congress, initiatives such as enforced caps on greenhouse gas emissions from industry, and European-style carbon markets, are getting a new hearing.
California and northeast US states are driving forward their own anti-warming initiatives, while evangelical Christians argue that man has a God-given duty to safeguard the planet for future generations.
“So what we’re starting to see is a coalition for action in the US,“ said Robert Watson, the World Bank’s chief scientist who from 1997 to 2002 headed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC, the UN’s top scientific authority on global warming, delivered its starkest warning yet at a Paris conference this month.
The UN body’s first report for six years said fossil fuel pollution would raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come.

BEIJING, Feb. 11--China will send ripples through the financial world when it unleashes an investment company with more money under management than any mutual fund in existence, according to analysts, AFP said.
The State Foreign Exchange Investment Company, which could be formed within just months, is expected to be in charge of 210 billion dollars, or one fifth the nation’s enormous foreign exchange reserves, they said.
“A company like that will definitely have an impact on global markets,“ said Zhang Ming, a Beijing-based economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“Other investors will be following it closely and try and guess its next move. They’ll buy assets that the company is likely to buy, and withdraw from markets if that’s what they believe the company will do,“ he said.
The State Foreign Exchange Investment Company is expected to spend its money on a wide array of investment targets at home and abroad, from oil and gas to financial assets and entire companies, analysts said.
It will get its huge bag of money as part of a plan to divide China’s 1.07 trillion dollars of reserves into three portions, the respected Southern Weekly paper said recently. Another 100 billion dollars from the reserves will be allocated to Central Huijin, a government investment arm, while 700 billion dollars will stay under management by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the paper said.
That arrangement will put the State Foreign Exchange Investment Company in charge of more money than the approximately 160 billion dollars of assets controlled by the Growth Fund of America, the world’s largest mutual fund.
“In the long term, the company should become a national reserve asset management company, which should be able to earn returns higher than those from US Treasury bonds,“ said Zhou Jiangong, a Shanghai-based economic analyst.
In finance, the ideal portfolio offers high yields combined with low risk, but the problem is China’s forex portfolio increasingly looks like the exact opposite.
It earns a relatively meager return on its US Treasury bonds, and still has to contemplate the awful and very real risk of a plunging US dollar.

PARIS, Feb. 11--Paris Ile de France, the economic development agency for the Paris region, Europe’s largest property market, attracted Euros 1.67 billion ($2.17 billion) worth of investment from Middle East investors in 2006.
The Paris region is Europe’s leading business real estate market with over 100 million square meters of commercial property, tradearabia.com reported.
The French capital has witnessed a significant increase in new investment, the total amount of investment in 2006 reached Euros18.6 billion, a level never seen before, and an increase of 56 per cent compared to 2005, said an official spokesman.
“The Paris region is extremely dynamic and attracts significant investment from the Middle East. Assets such as diversity of rental demand, market liquidity, transparency and transaction security have all contributed to our successful track record. Inward investment flows have averaged Euros11.4 billion over the past five years,“ said director of Strategy & Economic Analysis, Paris Region Economic Development Agency, Vincent Gollain.
During that period, Middle East investment has grown significantly and now represents over nine per cent of total investment in the Paris region.
This is now close to the volumes invested by German and British investors at 13 and 10 per cent respectively.
However, the French themselves continue to top the investment league table with 36 per cent with the US on 21 per cent of total investment.
With a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 480 billion Euros in 2005, representing 29 per cent of French GDP and five per cent of European GDP, the Paris region has long since proved to be a magnate for foreign investment and is rated as the highest in Europe.
“One of the secrets of the Paris region is its ability to generate high returns for investors, with office space returning over 10 per cent, industrial at 11 per cent and retail providing over 13 per cent,“ added Gollain.

WASHINGTON,
Feb. 11--The United States and South Korea launch their seventh and crucial round of talks this weekend to forge a free trade pact, complicated by Seoul’s unrelenting ban of American beef imports.
Racing to conclude an agreement by the end of March to give the US Congress its requisite three months to consider the deal, the two allies have to overcome differences on three sensitive issues--US anti-dumping rules, and non-tariff barriers in South Korea’s auto and drug markets, AFP said.
As negotiators begin their new round of talks on Sunday, US lawmakers have threatened to withhold support for any free trade deal amid South Korea’s persistent refusal to accept US beef imports.
Seoul last year lifted a three-year ban on US beef imposed to keep out mad-cow disease and agreed to accept shipments of boneless beef. But it has since blocked all three shipments sent after finding tiny bone fragments in them.
The US side claims South Korea is using the fragments as a pretext to exclude its beef and to protect local farmers.
Still, experts say there is political will by both governments and widespread support among US lawmakers and key US industries to conclude an agreement.
Brian Peck, a former senior director at the US Trade Representative (USTR) office, said there is a door open still, “as long as it (the beef issue) is resolved by the time Congress has to consider the FTA.“
“It is a challenge but it is doable,“ said Peck, now counsel for international trade with US legal firm Crowell and Moring LLP.
The beef ban is the only issue that both the US Congress and the administration have definitely said could wreck the deal.
“They haven’t said that on autos, they haven’t said that on pharmaceuticals,“ noted Amy Jackson, a former deputy assistant USTR for South Korea and currently director with C and M International, a trade and investment consulting firm affiliated with Crowell and Moring.
“On autos and pharmaceuticals, they said we need to get adequate concessions from Korea in order to make this agreement meaningful enough to be passed. But they have been much more definite on beef,“ Jackson said.

ESSEN, Germany, Feb. 11--The outlook for the Japanese economy this year is “strong“ and ensuring it remain so is one of main contributions that Japan can make to exchange rate stability and the world economy, IMF chief Rodrigo de Rato has said.
Quizzed Saturday about European concerns over the weakness of the yen at the G7 finance summit here, Rato avoided commenting on the exchange rate of the Japanese currency directly, AFP said.
“As we all know, floating currencies are determined by the market. And Japan has stopped intervening (on the yen) for years, which is a good policy,“ the head of the International Monetary Fund said.
He continued: “The main contribution that Japan can make to the world economy is to have a strong economy.“
The Japanese economy was emerging from a period of “long and difficult deflationary pressures,“ the IMF chief said.
Price pressures were still “very low“, but “the prospects for the Japanese economy are strong this year, even if there is still some weakness in consumption,“ he said.
Furthermore, the Bank of Japan has indicated that in the medium term, it would “continue to normalise monetary policy,“ Rato said, and that, by implication, would help boost the value of the yen.
The finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the world’s seven richest nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States--were meeting in this west German city for a two-day summit on global economic issues.

LEPSIC, Croatia, Feb. 11--Organic farmers in Croatia, where despite the country’s potential this type of agriculture is limited, hope that the Balkan country’s future membership of the European Union will help boost their ranks.
“As Croatia will be getting closer to the European Union and as agriculture legislation will be harmonized with EU standards, our position will improve and the others would be hopefully encouraged to follow us,“ Mario Sever, one of the pioneers in the sector, told AFP.
For Sever, the first certified organic farmer in Croatia, it all started as a hobby back in 1994 with a modest three acres of land cultivated for his family’s needs.
But when Sever, an architect, and his wife Ivka, an agronomist, lost their jobs the hobby become their source of income.
On their current 60 hectares (148 acres) of land near Ivanic Grad, southeast of the capital Zagreb, the Sever family cultivate vegetables, fruits and cereals and raise goats and poultry.

WARSAW, Poland, Feb. 11--The European Commission’s president appealed to Poland on Saturday to support an EU energy package aimed at lowering energy consumption and curbing global warning.
“We need a common approach in Europe to energy,“ Jose Manuel Barroso said after meeting in with Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Warsaw, AP said.
“We are not credible when we say that we try to speak with one voice to third parties and go on speaking with 27 voices inside the European Union,“ he said. “We need a common approach based on the rules of solidarity.“
Environment ministers of the EU’s 27 nations will debate the new strategy Feb. 20, with EU leaders set to vote on the plan at a March summit.
Barroso said he also hopes that Russia will soon lift a ban on Polish meat and other food products. The ban has forced a delay in Brussels and Moscow discussing a new cooperation deal.
“There are no reasons now to prolong this situation,“ he said. “From our point of view, it’s sure there were some problems but that ban was not justified. ... it should be solved sooner rather than later.“