With ambitious stimulus measures, impressive GDP growth and policy coordination, China has played a prominent role in fighting the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund's Deputy Managing Director Takatoshi Kato says.

Kato was in Beijing for the Third International Tax Dialogue (ITD) Global Conference which opened on Monday. In an exclusive interview with Xinhua before the meeting, he praised China's effective stimulus measures and hoped that China could maintain reform initiatives to make more success.

"China has adopted a very ambitious stimulus package a little bit ahead of other G-20 countries last November," Kato said, talking about China's efforts in fighting the crisis. In that way, China set "a good precedent" for other countries to follow suit in terms of the extent and content of the package, he said.

"In that sense, the IMF commends very much the very ambitious undertaking on the part of the Chinese authorities," stressed Kato.

In the third quarter China's GDP growth rose to 8.9 percent. According to Kato, the figure is encouraging in the sense that "strong growth was supported by strong investment and robust consumption."

"I hope this trend will be maintained in 2010," he said.

Kato pointed out that the Chinese authorities have encouraged more private consumption compared to investment and exports. "Several of their policy actions are certainly contributing in this direction, such as more significant budget appropriations for the social safety net and so on."

Kato said the IMF recognized that China has made progress in reforming foreign exchange rate management and other market infrastructure like further development of the stock market. "I hope these reform initiatives will continue further in the months ahead," he said.

Kato noted that global rebalancing means that in countries with substantial current account deficits, savings must be increased. And on the part of countries with significant current account surpluses, efforts to increase domestic demand will be increasingly important.

"Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as well as other leaders have affirmed several times the Chinese authorities' intention to encourage more private consumption," he noted. "I think that intention is consistent with global rebalancing agenda."

Kato also said China can further contribute to rebalancing initiatives by increasing households' purchasing power and making investment in the non-tradable sector more profitable.

As to the rise of G-20, Kato said that amid the deepest crisis since the Second World War, policy coordination and cooperation among players are most vital to the global economy. That is the background against which the G-20 framework has become prominent.

"We at the IMF think the recovery process will be slow. But given the nature of the recovery, it is critical for the G-20 to play a role of policy coordination, so that the global economy can be on a more solid footing," said Kato.

"China is a very prominent member of G-20 and China's role will be critical in that process," he added.

Kato also noted that the G-20 framework should make more voices of low-income countries heard. "There can be many ways, and I am sure G-20 leaders are looking at effective ways to represent low-income nations."

At the Pittsburgh summit in September, G-20 leaders agreed to at least a 5-percentage point shift in IMF quota shares to dynamic emerging and low-income countries from other IMF members, he said.

"That is one testament that the voices of emerging and low-income countries will be increasingly strengthened," he said, "The IMF and the World Bank to some extent are trying to represent the views of low-income countries through our universal membership.

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