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As far as looks go, Washington turned in a dazzling performance as host city for this past week's meetings at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Cherry blossoms peaked, tulips popped, and the air carried the sweet scent of hyacinths.

But politics-wise, Washington let down its global guests. They came begging Congress to approve a package of IMF reforms, but are leaving Sunday with nothing.

"We are all very disappointed by the ongoing failure to bring these reforms to conclusion," Australia's Treasurer Joe Hockey told reporters.

After a two-year slump, global commerce is expected to pick up in the next two years, one report says.

World trade is forecasted to grow by 4.7% this year and 5.3% in 2015, buoyed by continual improvement in the economies of many countries, the World Trade Organization said in its annual report.

That will be an improvement on the past two years when global trade growth averaged a weak 2.2%, the report said, but still below the 20-year average of 5.3% growth.

WASHINGTON — Finance chiefs from the world's largest economies lined up against the U.S. on Friday, stepping up pressure on the International Monetary Fund's most powerful member to sign off on a long-stalled pact to boost the IMF's ability to rescue countries in economic trouble.

The Group of 20 nations' finance ministers and central bankers laid bare their frustration over Congress' failure to ratify a 2010 agreement that would increase the IMF's lending authority and give emerging markets such as China and Brazil a bigger voice in the fund.

“BY ALMOST any measure, the world is better than it has ever been,” Bill Gates wrote in his 2014 annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “People are living longer, healthier lives. Many — though by no means all — of the countries we used to call poor now have thriving economies. And the percentage of very poor people has dropped by more than half since 1990.”

WASHINGTON - Treasurer Joe Hockey has blasted the US Congress for holding up reforms at the International Monetary Fund, saying the delay has weakened Washington's standing in the world.

In rare public criticism of the close ally, Mr Hockey said Australia - the current chair of the Group of 20 major economies - was "deeply disappointed" by the failure of a 2010 IMF reform plan to come into effect and said the blame lay "firmly and uniquely" with the US Congress.

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday said a stronger recovery in rich countries such as the US and UK had sharply reduced the risks of another global downturn.

Although the fund forecast global growth of 3.6 per cent in 2014, rising to 3.9 per cent next year, it warned that the world still faced “years of slow and subpar growth” unless countries embarked on structural reforms to improve their growth.

The World Bank trimmed its 2014 growth forecast for developing East Asia but said the region's economies were likely to see steady growth in the next couple of years, helped by a pick-up in global growth and trade.

The Washington-based development bank expects the developing East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region to grow 7.1 percent in 2014 and 2015, down from the 7.2 percent rate it had previously forecast for both years.

BRUSSELS, April 3, 2014 - A successful multi-donor trust fund launched a new phase today with commitments from donors for close to US$20 million. The Debt Management Facility II (DMF II) program builds on previous success in debt-management advisory work and marks the beginning of a new partnership between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The partnership will be dedicated to strengthening the capacity of developing countries to manage their debt in a manner that is sustainable and encourages economic development.

Battles over water and food will erupt within the next five to 10 years as a result of climate change, the president of the World Bank said as he urged those campaigning against global warming to learn the lessons of how protesters and scientists joined forces in the battle against HIV.

Jim Yong Kim said it was possible to cap the rise in global temperatures at 2C but that so far there had been a failure to replicate the "unbelievable" success of the 15-year-long coalition of activists and scientists to develop a treatment for HIV.

Russia wasn’t all bad for Ukraine. A 45% reduction in the price of natural gas and what was supposed to be an additional $15 billion in aid was a necessary “lifeline”, the International Monetary Fund’s Christine Lagarde said on Wednesday.