The Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday highlighted the importance of employing macroprudential policies to bolster the financial stability amid the global economic uncertainties triggered by the euro zone debt crisis.

The euro area was expected to enter a mild recession this year, while other major advanced economies faced the outlook of "weak and bumpy" growth. Growth would also moderate in emerging economies, Zhu Min, IMF's deputy managing director, said on Friday at an international conference on macroprudential policies to achieve financial stability held in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

"The global outlook raises important questions about how to design financial stability institutions and how to implement macroprudential policies in a credible way throughout the cycle," according to Zhu's written speech.

Macroprudential policy was still at an early stage of implementation, and countries needed to resolve three crucial issues to make this policy effective, namely building a sound institutional framework, designing an analytical framework to monitor and assess systemic risk, and establishing international cooperation.

The conference gathered central bankers, finance ministry officials, financial regulators and supervisors from Latin America, New Zealand, Spain, Britain and the United States to exchange views and to discuss how the IMF can help to develop relevant policies through its technical assistance and its annual surveillance of macroeconomic stability.

Participants of the meeting noted that the IMF could leverage its understanding and analysis of policies in all its member countries to provide focused research and analysis on many of the questions that still needed to be answered to address this new policy agenda.

After the onset of the financial crisis, financial regulators stepped up efforts on macroprudential supervision, which was targeted at systemic risk of the financial sector and interaction among different financial agencies.