Washington, Saturday 11 October 2008: Group of Seven finance chiefs has announced a plan of action to fight a global crisis including the use of all available tools to support key institutions and prevent their failure.

The G7 agrees today that the current situation calls for urgent and exceptional action, a statement released by the US Treasury said yesterday.

We commit to continue working together to stabilise financial markets and restore the flow of credit, to support global economic growth.

The plan states that the G7 would take decisive action and use all available tools to support systematically important financial institutions and prevent their failure.

The communique was released after a meeting of Finance Ministers and central bankers of the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy and Canada in Washington.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in a separate statement, said the G7 had finalised an aggressive action plan to address the turmoil in global financial markets and the stresses on our financial institutions.

This action plan provides a coherent framework that will direct our individual and collective policy steps to provide liquidity to markets, strengthen financial institutions, protect savers, and enforce investor protections, said Paulson, the architect of a USD 700-billion bank bailout passed by Congress last week.

Never has it been more essential to find collective solutions to ensure stable and efficient financial markets and restore the health of the world economy, he said.

The G7 statement said the members will take all necessary steps to unfreeze credit and money markets and ensure that banks and ensure that banks and other financial institutions have broad access to liquidity and funding.

(Agency)