G-20 Finance Chiefs Reaffirm Agreement on Forex

Rio de Janeiro, July 26 (Jiji Press)–Finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies reaffirmed Friday their past agreement warning against excessive foreign exchange market fluctuations.

At their two-day meeting in Rio de Janeiro through the day, the G-20 finance and central bank chiefs adopted a joint statement, after failing to do so in the past two meetings.

“We reaffirm our April 2021 exchange rate commitment,” the G-20 officials said in the statement. The 2021 statement said, among other things, that the G-20 economies would “consult closely on foreign exchange market developments” and that “excessive volatility or disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability.”

“We firmly conveyed Japan’s position on international challenges (in the latest G-20 talks), and Japan’s views were reflected in the outcomes of the meeting,” Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki told a press conference after the end of the Rio de Janeiro talks. “It was an important achievement,” Suzuki said of the G-20 officials’ reconfirmation of the agreement on the foreign exchange market.

His comments came after the yen’s recent sharp depreciation has come to a pause partly on the back of Japanese authorities’ yen-buying currency market interventions. Still, the yen remains under strong selling pressure due in part to the wide gap between U.S. and Japanese interest rates.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]