G20 likely to keep stimulus pledge - UK govt source

By Sumeet Desai

LONDON (Reuters) - G20 policymakers are likely to maintain their pledge to keep economic life-support packages in place until recovery is assured when they meet this weekend, a UK government source said on Wednesday.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 club of rich and developing nations will gather in St Andrews in Scotland on Friday and Saturday to follow up on agreements made at a leaders' summit in Pittsburgh in September.

Since then, more signs have emerged that the world is coming out of the worst synchronised downturn since the World War 2 though some countries like Britain have still not shown a return to growth.

But the source said it was probably still too early to start withdrawing the extraordinary support measures that countries have put into their economies over the last year.

"We are not yet back to trend growth levels," the source said. "I expect we will have the same language as in Pittsburgh, that the current support measures need to be kept in place until recovery is well secured."

Policymakers will, however, discuss how they can coordinate or exchange information on eventual strategies fro withdrawing the stimulus, alongside talks on how to establish a framework for more balanced global growth and climate finance initiatives.

"There will be a set of discussions about how we're going to sequence all this as governments think about moving from a period of stress and so forth to a period that's steadier and more regularised and as some of these extraordinary measures which the G20 countries took become less necessary," U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said in Johannesburg.

Wolin added, however, that for now the focus would be to continue pushing stimulus.