Washington - Less than one month after London's G20 summit aimed to pull the world out of recession, the world's top finance ministers descended on the US capital Friday to review their success. The United States and other countries are pointing to some signs that the global downturn may be slowing, even as the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday forecast a 1.3-per-cent contraction of the world economy in 2009, the one-year performance since World War II.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was hosting ministers and central bank heads from the world's 20 leading economies later Friday. He will hold a separate meeting with ministers from the seven wealthiest nations, known as the G7, whose financial sectors share most of the blame for starting the global downturn.

The flurry of talks comes ahead of a broader gathering this weekend in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's 185 members.

Finance ministers are billing the meetings as a chance to take stock of the world's progress - or continued descent - since G20 leaders met on April 2 in London, where they agreed on a massive boost to the resources of international financial institutions.

With the crisis spreading to all corners of the globe, the G20 has risen over the last six months from obscurity to become the top venue for governments to coordinate efforts to revive their economies.

The G7, by contrast, has lost some of its past significance as emerging powers like China and India are helping to keep the world's economy running with their cooling but continued expansion.

Top of the G7's agenda is an unfinished effort to stabilize the financial sector. Most of the attention is still on the United States, which has yet to get a strong grip on a housing downturn that has threatened the world's financial powerhouses.

Geithner will brief on Washington's latest efforts to stabilize US financial firms, an administration official said, including the so- called "stress tests" being carried out on a series of top banks to evaluate just how solid their finances really are.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Thursday that efforts to remove the toxic mortgage assets at the centre of the US crisis are still "far from what we need."

The IMF itself is hoping the gathering will secure more pledges from countries for its own lending efforts. The G20 promised to triple the IMF's lending resources to 750 billion dollars. About two thirds of the money has been committed so far. (dpa)