MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

British PM anticipates no early end to international “fiscal stimulus”

Gordon Brown insists on “global compact for growth and jobs”

British Primer Minister Gordon Brown has warned there will be no early end to the international “fiscal stimulus” package agreed by world leaders to drag the global economy out of recession.

The UK Prime Minister, who left Monday for the United States for a week of intensive international summitry, said the one trillion dollar support package agreed last April in London would continue for at least another year.

In comments to foreign journalists released ahead of his departure, Mr Brown said that he believed that there was still strong support among world leaders for what he described as a “global compact for growth and jobs”.

“I believe that there is support for that framework, that global compact; that plan for growth and jobs,” he said.

“The stimulus that we have still got to give the world economy is greater than the stimulus we have already had, so I would say that over the next 15 months you will see America's stimulus higher than it was in the last few months because that is how it is projected to develop, Germany's stimulus next year is higher than this year.

”What we want to do is safeguard a recovery from a recession we feared would develop into a depression.“

The timing of the withdrawal of the fiscal stimulus package as the global recovery is likely to be one of the key issues at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday.

British officials travelling with Mr Brown believe that it is essential that any action is carefully co-ordinated at the international level to ensure that the still fragile world economy is not plunged back into recession.

Britain wants to see countries like the US, France and Germany committed to continue state support for the economy as it emerges from recession. G20 finance ministers meeting in London earlier this month agreed that fiscal stimulus packages should be maintained ”until recovery is secured”.

Mr Brown said the economy was one of five challenges that the world leaders would have to address this week, along with climate change, poverty, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.