By Todd Buell

ISTANBUL (MNI) – The world needs a revised exchange-rate system,
with China on board, to replace the current “non-system,” the Bank of
Italy’s Deputy Director General Ignazio Visco told Market News
International on Wednesday.

In the new system, China would take gradual steps to allow its
currency, the yuan, to float freely on global markets and be a true,
convertible international currency, Visco said on the sidelines of the
Global Economic Symposium here.

China’s recent moves to let the yuan appreciate are not in this
spirit and do not reveal a “different policy regime,” he said.

“The exchange rate system is clearly something that has to be
revised. It is a non-system,” Visco added. “What we have now is a system
that does not have the ability to correct itself.”

He insisted that any discussions on currency reform must involve
China. The yuan “must become an international, convertible currency.” It
must become one of the major international currencies, he said.

Getting there is the hard part, Visco conceded. The question is
whether one goes about this using a “big bang” or a “gradual” approach.
A “more flexible” approach for China would reduce international pressure
on the country while at the same time helping to “guarantee” a shift in
the country toward a more domestically-driven economy, Visco said.

Yet China’s recent loosening of its peg to the dollar in the summer
was not really in the right spirit, Visco said.

“It is still limited. It is clear that they feel that this is an
issue, but clearly this is not a change in policy, nor a change in the
policy regime,” he argued.

On issues closer to home, Visco said that the creation of the
European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) bolsters his confidence in
the health of the European financial system. Although he hopes that the
E440 billion fund is never tapped, it will have to be if conditions
warrant its use, he insisted.

Asked if he was worried that a Eurozone country might be forced to
tap the EFSF, as some observers think Ireland or Portugal may have to,
Visco said that the presence of the fund eases his worries.

“We hope it will not be used, but if it is there, and if it is
needed, then it has to be used,” he said.

Visco was non-committal about whether the EFSF should be made
permanent. “We’ll see. I don’t know,” he said.

Visco said that the improvement in the interbank market is a
“pre-condition” for the European Central Bank to wind down its
non-conventional liquidity measures. But the sequence of such decisions
is up to the Governing Council, he added.

Visco declined to express a preference as to who will succeed ECB
President Jean-Claude Trichet when his term expires at the end of
October 2011, even though Bank of Italy Governor is considered a
contender, along with Bundesbank President Axel Weber.

The ECB succession issue is “something that has to be considered
with care, but without having a war,” he said.

Turning to Italian fiscal policy, Visco asserted that his country
has the political will to lower its debt. “It is very well understood
that debt is a constraint…So far markets have acknowledged” that Italy
is able to solve its fiscal problems, he said.

–Frankfurt bureau; +49-69-720142, tbuell@marketnews.com

[TOPICS: M$$EC$,M$X$$$,M$$CR$,MT$$$$,MX$$$$,MGX$$$]