Lagos — The worst of the global economic crisis is far from over but there are signs that the world has started to crawl out of recession, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said yesterday.

Finance ministers of the Group of Eight nations agreed over the weekend that the global economy was showing encouraging signs of stabilisation and started to consider how to unwind rescue steps for their economies.

The IMF managing director said on a visit to Kazakhstan that he largely agreed with their position but he appealed for caution in assessing the state of the global economy.

"Their (G8) stance is that we are beginning to see some green shoots but nevertheless we have to be cautious ... The large part of the worst is not yet behind us," he said in opening remarks at talks with Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov.

"We see, at the IMF, a recovery towards the beginning of 2010. 2009 is already done, we know it's a bad year," he added.

"At the global economic level, the growth will be -1.3 (per cent) which is the first negative growth since the Depression. 2010 may be better and we expect recovery in the first half of 2010," Strauss-Kahn said.

Pressure has been building in the G8 for plans to wind down economic stimulus as soon as it is no longer needed -"exit strategies"- that would prevent market interest rates from climbing high enough to threaten economic recovery.

Strauss-Kahn referred to credit growth as a sign that financial activity was beginning to pick up, but did not say whether the IMF was ready to help with a possible "exit strategy" once economic recovery is certain.

He said an expected global economic revival in the first half of next year would help emerging market nations such as Kazakhstan to return to healthy gross domestic product growth.

In spite of the notes of cautious optimism on the global economy, the Nigeria government yesterday expressed concern over measures taken by the developed nations to address the current global economic meltdown, adding that they were insufficient.

A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja said the Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe, leading a delegation to the just-concluded G-8 meeting of ministers of foreign affairs in Rome, stated that "the measures adopted by the developed world to address the economic crisis does not sufficiently take into consideration the issues of concern for Nigeria and also the rest of the developing world."

He said developing countries had been left with the burden of the crisis, aside from the fact that they had not participated constructively in the discussions to find remedies.

"Their real economic interests are left at the margins of the discussion."

Maduekwe noted that the rich industrialised nations had, as an immediate response to the crisis, created economic stimulus packages meant to provide immediate and short terms remedies.

He listed these to include funds to ailing industries and companies to stay afloat in a bid to stem the economic crisis.

Others are purchase of banks' toxic assets in order to sustain the ability of the banks to still offer credit and/or to recapitalise.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Maduekwe called on the developed economies to see the crisis as an opportunity for global economic renewal, with the creation of a new global financial and economic order as the focus.

He said that that would build, not only on the strengths of advanced countries, but also on the concerns of their developmental partners.