Fiscal consolidation presents the "most daunting" challenge to the world's financial authorities, senior economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have said.

Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist at the Fund, and José Viñals, the director of its monetary and capital markets department, said on Tuesday that strategies to cut expenditure must be made and communicated now "to reassure markets." Extraordinary stimulus measures would take care of themselves, the economists said, but the