France had hoped to strike a deal at the weekend on economic indicators that would be used to monitor imbalances, including current account balances, real exchange rates and foreign exchange reserves.

In an urgent appeal for agreement, Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, asked G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to look beyond a "mechanistic approach".

"We will not succeed in everything. But the worst-case scenario would be to refuse to address the real subject, the international monetary order ... I hope your discussions will not get bogged down in interminable debate on these indicators."

China, however, signalled its opposition to the monitoring plan. "We think it is not appropriate to use real effective exchange rates and reserves," said Xie Xuren, Chinese finance minister.

His comments further lowered expectations that any substantial agreement would be reached at this weekend's G20 meeting, which brings together advanced and emerging economies. The decision to adopt guidelines to help global rebalancing was adopted at the G20 summit in Seoul in November, and is intended to form a central part of this year's meetings.

"Of course you have to look at measures of imbalances," argued Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary. In Seoul, the US failed to secure precise targets for current account surpluses, with a proposed limit of 4 per cent of gross domestic product.

While Germany supports using the suggested economic indicators for monitoring purposes, like China it opposes any specific targets.

"There is a vast majority of countries that support having these five indicators together," said Jörg Asmussen, Germany's financial state secretary.

Jim Flaherty, Canada's finance minister, said he believed there was agreement on two indicators, the level of public debt and deficits, and the level of private savings, but there was difficulty agreeing on the current account measure.