The world’s major economies were split down the middle on Friday over how to measure imbalances in the global economy in a bid to avert future financial crises, Japan’s Finance Minister said.

Speaking hours before the start of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers, Yoshihiko Noda, said he was not sure they would reach any agreement on a set of indicators to assess economic equilibrium.

“It is uncertain whether the countries will agree on all indicators, but I think agreement on some is possible,” Noda told reporters. From working group discussions, I get the impression countries are now split in half about their opinions.

In preparatory talks on Thursday, G20 sources said China and Germany dragged their feet over a balance of payments indicator. Beijing was resisting including measurements of the real foreign exchange rate and currency reserves in the package. Chinese Central Bank Governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, in Paris for the G20 meeting, said Beijing would decide the pace of the appreciation of the yuan on its own and would not be swayed by pressure from other countries.

A German source cast doubt on a deal at the two-day Paris session, saying Berlin wanted nothing less than a full list of five indicators to be used to tackle global mismatches. “It is hard for us to imagine leaving some out, for example leaving out the currency-related ones while holding on to the current account one,” the German source told Reuters.

France has run into opposition with its push for greater transparency and regulation of commodities prices and a reform of the international monetary system and is pinning its hopes on measuring imbalances in the world economy, where the G20 nations account for around 85 per cent of GDP.

French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde said she hopes the first ministerial meeting of France’s year-long G20 presidency would agree to a preliminary list of indicators in a two-step process leading to guidelines for more coordinated global economic policies by the end of the year.