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          WASHINGTON, April 24 (AFP): Global finance chiefs wrapped up three days of talks yesterday, calling for action against runaway oil prices as they pressed China to ease its currency regime and approved a far-reaching overhaul of IMF operations.
The gathering here of finance ministers and central bank governors in addition backed plans to meet a long-standing demand by emerging market countries for a greater stake in decision-making at the International Monetary Fund.
World Bank policymakers for their part launched a new anti-corruption drive and gave final approval to the cancellation of 37 billion dollars in debt owed the Bank by 17 poor countries, most of them in Africa.
The World Bank in addition unveiled a two-year project aimed at promoting the use of clean energy in developing countries.
Energy needs were also very much on the minds of the Group of Seven industrial powers, who Friday declared that it was "crucial" for oil producing countries to boost infrastructure investment in the face of soaring crude oil prices.
While G7 finance leaders agreed that the global economic outlook remained favourable, they warned that oil prices were a menacing cloud on prospects.
Stepped-up pressure for increased oil production prompted a blunt reminder from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that oil consuming nations bore a responsibility to build more refineries in order to ease supply constraints.
Western finance leaders were also predicted to meet resistance from China to their insistence that Beijing revalue its currency to help iron out dangerous global economic imbalances.
In talks Friday, the G7 asserted that it was "critical" for China and other Asian economies to pursue greater currency flexibility.
The new focus on China was a victory for the United States, whose trade deficit with Beijing last year exploded to a record 202 billion dollars.
For more than a year, Washington has been prodding both its G7 partners and the IMF to take a stronger stand on China's system of confining its currency-the yuan-to tightly controlled trading regime.
That policy, they argue, undervalues the yuan, giving Chinese exports an unfair advantage in global markets.
The IMF meanwhile took a first step toward a major transformation by agreeing to boost the role of emerging market countries in its decision-making and to transform its economic surveillance mechanism.
Fund policymakers asked IMF chief Rodrigo Rato to develop "concrete proposals" on voting reform in the institution by a September gathering in Singapore.
A French official later said China and South Korea could be among the first countries to benefit from an enhanced stake-holding in the IMF.
The IMF governing body at the same time endorsed plans for a new multilateral surveillance mechanism designed to give the IMF the means to prevent the "spillover" of one nation's economic policies onto another.
The change had been actively backed by the United States and other members of the G7 that have chafed under China's exchange rate policies.
Rato explained that "this is a process that goes beyond analysis and description of problems" and "engages in discussions with specific governments about the linkages and spillovers of the macroeconomic situation and in relation to others in the global economy."
The G7 in addition urged the IMF to tighten its monitoring of national currency policies, a measure promptly rejected by the head of the Chinese central bank.