Washington - The US government plans to take ownership stakes in banks in a fresh bid to restore confidence in financial markets, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday.

The dramatic step comes as part of the 700-billion-dollar rescue package passed by Congress last week that gave the government broad new powers to buy up soured mortgage assets from troubled banks in the United States.

Washington - Sub-Saharan Africa is facing a spike in inflation and a slowdown in growth over this year and the next as it deals with the triple threats of food and fuel price surges and some spill-over from the financial turmoil, the International Monetary Fund warned Friday.

The region is still showing stronger growth than much of the world. Growth will fall to 6 per cent in 2008 and 2009, down from 6.5 per cent in 2007, according to the IMF's semi-annual economic report on the region.

Washington - Developing countries warned wealthier nations to meet their aid commitments and help avoid a spill-over of the financial turmoil that could prompt the collapse of some poorer countries' economies.

Ministers and central bankers from 24 developing countries meeting in Washington warned that their economies were now being struck by three crises - the financial turmoil as well as food and energy price surges - and would need help pulling themselves back from the brink.

Washington - Latin America's governments will have no trouble financing their 2009 budgets despite the current credit crunch and global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Friday.

IMF specialists for the region explained that some governments already have enough funds to finance their budgets for next year, while those that do not will use part of their reserves.

Washington - The world's top economic powers hoped that a guarantee to take action on the financial crisis would be enough to stop a global sell-off in stocks as they kicked off a meeting at the US Treasury on Friday.

But finance ministers and central bank heads from the Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations were reluctant to offer a common, cross-border solution to shore up banks on the brink of bankruptcy in their own countries.

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