London - Chancellor George Osborne is recruiting
international support for his unyielding stance on deficit cutting, the
Financial Times said on Monday.
In an editorial article published in the FT, Osborne and
several co-authors called for "hard decisions on spending, entitlements
and taxation in countries with large budget deficits."
The article is co-authored with the finance ministers of
Australia, Canada, Singapore and South Africa.
It was written on the initiative of Osborne and Tharman
Shanmugaratnam, Singapore's finance minister and chair of the International
Monetary and Finance Committee of the IMF, following a conversation between the
two men earlier this year.
The article coincides with two gloomy reports on the British
labour market, being released on Monday, which suggest that economic growth is
slowing.
Osborne believes there is a growing international consensus
that Britain has got its fiscal strategy broadly right, according to the FT.
"Getting public finances back on to a sustainable trajectory
is central. Nobody should underestimate the political difficulties inherent in
the task, but it first requires a collective sense of reality," the
article said.
"Hard decisions on spending, entitlements and taxes in
countries with large budget deficits are unavoidable."
"Consolidation must be accompanied by targeted and
fiscally sustainable policies to spur job creation, plus training and private
investments to lift each economy's potential to grow and meet its people's
aspirations," the ministers wrote.
Commenting on the problems of further contagion in the
eurozone the finance ministers, who wrote the article together, said the
European Central Bank must take decisive steps to reassure markets.
"The eurozone needs to demonstrate commitment to greater
fiscal integration and governance arrangements that avoid moral hazard and
entrench fiscal responsibility," the ministers said.