G7 Finance Chiefs Kick Off 2-Day Meeting in Paris

Paris, May 18 (Jiji Press)–Finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of Seven major industrialized nations kicked off a two-day meeting in Paris on Monday, focusing on issues including responses to downside risks to the global economy from the ongoing Middle East turmoil. Also on the agenda at the high-profile meeting are how to build supply chains for critical minerals that do not rely on China and how to address the threat of potential cyberattacks on financial systems by using latest artificial intelligence models. The top financial officials from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States plus the European Union aim to adopt a joint statement at the end of the talks on Tuesday. Japan is represented by Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda. French finance minister Roland Lescure, who chairs the G7 talks, told reporters right before the opening of the meeting that concerns over high inflation, growing fiscal deficits and the political instability in Britain are behind recent spikes in long-term interest rates in Japan, the United States and Europe. Lescure added that he will discuss these issues with his G7 colleagues. The G7 officials will look into how they should coordinate in monetary and other policies at a time when the global economy is weighed down by growing inflation and slowing growth amid the prospect of a prolonged Middle East crisis. With France, which holds this year’s G7 presidency, putting weight on diversifying supply chains for critical minerals including rare earths, the finance and central bank chiefs will discuss issues such as building strategic reserves of such minerals and introducing a minimum price system to counter cheap rare earths from China. They will also consider responses to possible abuse of advanced AI models, such as U.S. startup Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, for cyberattacks on financial institutions. There are growing concerns that such attacks could substantially disrupt financial markets. Claude Mythos is extremely capable of identifying vulnerabilities in systems. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]