Washington  - While it is too soon for governments to pull out of their unprecedented interventions in global financial markets, the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday urged countries to lay out a clearer exit strategy from the crisis.

In a new study, the IMF said governments and central banks had acted properly by investing trillions of dollars in bail-outs, loans and guarantees to financial firms over the past year as Wall Street and other financial centres stood on the brink of collapse.

But the IMF warned that the "ultimate cost" of these efforts would only increase the longer that governments put taxpayer money on the line.

"We've got to get from a statement of desired targets to spelling out the nuts and bolts of how we get there," said Adrienne Cheasty of the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department.

Central banks should begin closing down lending programmes that no longer have strong demand and begin returning the burden to private investors. But the IMF called for a "gradual approach" that would not threatened the new-found stability of the financial sector.

With signs the global economy is recovering from its first recession since World War II, how to end government interventions and curb massive deficits will be a key topic when leaders of the Group of 20 nations meet next week in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  dpa