The International Monetary Fund's member countries
The Fund this week cut its 2014 global growth forecast to 3.3 percent from 3.4 percent, the third reduction this year as the prospects for a sustainable recovery from the 2007-2009 global financial crisis have ebbed, despite hefty injections of cash by the world's central banks.
European officials have sought to dispel the gloom, with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
But efforts to provide more room for France to meet its European Union deficit target looked set to founder on Germany's insistence that the agreement on fiscal rectitude was set in stone.
The IMF panel urged countries to carry out politically tough reforms to labor markets and social security to free up government money to invest in infrastructure to create jobs and lift growth.
It called on central banks to be careful when communicating changes in policy in order to avoid financial market shocks. While not naming any central banks, the warning appeared aimed at the US Federal Reserve, which will end its quantitative easing policy this month and appears poised to begin raising interest rates around the middle of next year.