A two-day summit of the Group of Seven major industrial nations ended Friday with leaders broadly agreeing to better cooperate on fiscal measures to spur global growth. But they remain sharply divided on how much each country should spend.
A joint communique, issued in Ise, Mie Prefecture, lacked any specific plan or targets for joint fiscal spending, making any shift in the austere fiscal stances of Britain and Germany difficult, despite Japan's repeated calls for other G-7 members to help reduce what it says is the risk of a "global economic crisis."
"The focus was whether the G-7 would hammer out any new economic policies, in particular fiscal ones. But there is no surprise," Masaki Kuwahara, a senior economist at Nomura Securities Co, told The Japan Times.