That leaves economic policymakers from top industrial nations delivering progress reports on how they are implementing a three-pronged strategy to improve growth  the United States raising its savings rate to cut its deficits, Europe making structural reforms to boost growth and Japan securing recovery.
"We will revisit the consensus," German central bank president Axel Weber told Reuters when asked what the G7 will achieve on the economic policy front.
Equilibrium economy
"As long as we agree on the homework and we all agree to do it, I think we are moving toward a more equilibrium global economy," said Weber, who attends the G7 as Bundesbank president and also sits on the European Central Bank's policy council. For more than a year now, G7 policymakers have been urging China to adopt a flexible exchange-rate regime. Its yuan currency is currently pegged at a very low value of about 8.28.
Flexibility is aimed at relieving upward pressure on the euro, which has borne the brunt of dollar declines, and thus helping Europe grow faster.
This is part of a plan to rebalance the global economy, now powered mainly by a dynamic US. Speculation was rife in financial markets before the Davos meetings  where business, political and financial leaders gather for five days of high-powered networking  that China could signal at G7 it was ready to move to a flexible exchange-rate regime. China is attending the February 4 to 5 meeting.
But Huang Ju, China's vice premier for financial and banking issues, told the Davos gathering that before acting on exchange rates, China needs to make further progress on cleaning up its ailing banking system and opening up its capital markets.
"We do not have a specific time frame," Huang said on Saturday. "To improve the exchange-rate mechanism, we have to maintain the exchange rate at a reasonably stable level."
G7 finance ministers also want details on how the United States will cut its massive current account deficit.
Developments
At 5.6 per cent of GDP and growing, it is fuelling dollar declines. But they expect no major developments, since the Bush administration budget is not unveiled until the following week.
That leaves the British scheme to double aid to poorer states to $100 billion a year by leveraging existing budgets in capital markets as the most likely topic for G7 agreement.
It got a major boost after German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said at Davos that this was "a proposal around which the world is preparing to unite."
Four of the European members of the G7  Italy, France, Germany and Britain  are now supporting a key element of the development plan, the International Financial Facility.
US Treasury Under Secretary John Taylor also threw US backing behind a plan to lift Africa from poverty. "I think it's a terrific idea," Taylor told reporters at Davos.  Reuters