A senior euro zone finance minister rebuffed US calls for the region to ramp up government spending, saying yesterday that Europe was already doing enough to pump money into the world economy.

Just a week before the world's major leaders are due to meet in London to agree ways to defuse the crisis, Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the Eurogroup forum of euro zone finance ministers, dismissed President Barack Obama's calls for leading economies to spend more in concerted action.

A record drop in Japanese exports underlined the scale of the global collapse in spending by companies and consumers. The world's second-largest economy reported exports nearly halved in February from a year earlier, a record fall, and imports also tumbled.