MILAN, Oct 12 (Reuters) - The Seoul summit of the Group of 20 needs to extend international cooperation on economic issues to include currencies, a senior Bank of Italy official said in a newspaper interview on Tuesday.
In the interview in la Repubblica newspaper, Director General Fabrizio Saccomanni said that overall the euro zone economy was broadly balanced, though individual countries did have imbalances.
"The euro zone does not have imbalances to correct, if taken globally. Instead there are (imbalances) among countries. Some are in surplus, such as Germany, other have lost competitiveness," he said.
"Experience says that exchange rates are followed with attention. The strong euro stabilises prices and does not make a restrictive monetary policy necessary," he said.
On the Chinese currency, Saccomanni said the Chinese remember the Japanese experience in the 1980s and 1990s when international pressure to revalue the yen led to recession.
"The (new) framework will have to give guarantees that there are no excessive fluctuations in rates," he said.
(Writing by Nigel Tutt; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)