The world is still in deep economic crisis despite signs of recovery in a few countries, Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma said Wednesday night.
"It is wrong to speak of the crisis in the past tense," Sharma said at the opening ceremony of this year's Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting in the southern Cypriot city of Limassol.
Sharma said the world was still deep in recession and that "the residual effects will be all the worse, and all the longer-lasting, for the smaller, weaker, poorer countries, which do not have the cushion or the economic resilience to weather the storms."
"Rarely, if ever, have the challenges facing finance ministers been more complex or grave," he said, urging Commonwealth countries to learn from each other in responding to the global economic crisis.
This year's meeting is very crucial because of the graveness of the situation, he said.
The meeting focuses on sharing experiences on how the Commonwealth countries should deal with the impact of the global economic crisis.