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The risk of a slowdown in the global economic recovery has risen sharply, but governments should continue planning to tighten fiscal policy, the International Monetary Fund has said.

Updates to the IMF’s regular world economic outlook and assessment of global financial conditions, released on Thursday, said jitters in financial markets in May and June threatened confidence and growth worldwide.

“In the near term, the main risk is an escalation of financial stress and contagion, prompted by rising concern over sovereign risk,” the world economic outlook said.

“This could lead to additional increases in funding costs and weaker bank balance sheets and hence to tighter lending conditions, declining business and consumer confidence, and abrupt changes in relative exchange rates.”

The IMF did not change its forecast for 2011, regarding these problems as a threat rather than a central projection. But it warned that the stress in financial markets would pose difficult challenges for policymakers.

“Potential downside economic risks and the strains in interbank and sovereign markets have complicated exits from the extraordinary fiscal, monetary and financial policies initiated some months ago,” the report said. The fund was one of the first big economic institutions to call for fiscal stimulus to help the world economy ride the storm created by the credit crunch in 2007-2008.

But in recent months it has fallen into line with many others, including the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, in emphasising fiscal consolidation rather than keeping the public spending taps open.

“Most advanced economies do not need to tighten before 2011, because tightening sooner could undermine the fledgling recovery, but they should not add further stimulus,” it said.

The IMF called for most governments in advanced economies to use monetary rather than fiscal policy as the “first line of defence” to any weakening in demand, in spite of the fact that interest rates across much of the industrialised world are near zero.

It also urged the European Central Bank to give stronger signals to the bond markets that it was prepared to intervene if necessary to boost liquidity.

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BEIJING, Mon Jul 5 (Reuters) – A geologist accused of stealing state secrets after he brokered the sale of an oil database has been sentenced to eight years in jail, the U.S. embassy said on Monday, over two-and-one-half years after he was detained.

Geologist Xue Feng, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen born in China, was detained late in 2007 after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his employer at the time, Colorado-based consultancy IHS Energy, now known as IHS Inc.

Xue was convicted of attempting to obtain and traffic in state secrets, a year after his trial ended, said the Duihua Foundation, which advocates for prisoners’ rights in China and the United States. The database was classified as a state secret only after it was sold, it added.

“We are dismayed by Dr. Xue’s eight-year sentence and 200,000 yuan ($29,540) fine. We remain concerned about his rights to due process under Chinese law,” U.S. embassy spokesman Richard Buangan said in an email. China’s notoriously vague state secrets laws received international attention last year, when Australian citizen Stern Hu and three colleagues working for mining giant Rio Tinto were detained for stealing state secrets during the course of tense iron ore negotiations.

The four were later convicted of the lesser charges of receiving kickbacks and stealing commercial secrets. The verdict of at least two senior Chinese steel officials accused of leaking the secrets has never been revealed, more than three months after they were convicted in a closed trial by a Shanghai court.

Xue’s case only became public two years after he was detained. He was burned with cigarettes while in detention, Jerome Cohen, a legal expert advising Xue’s family, has said.

“Obviously the sentence seems very harsh, especially when the evidence was so weak that the prosecutor had to return the case to the police twice and the court had to return the case to the prosecutor twice and then take almost a year after the trial to render its decision,” Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law, wrote in an email.

Xue’s sentence was not listed among the public rulings of the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court. Phone calls to the court were not immediately answered at midday on Monday.

“I have visited Xue Feng several times during the past half year. He has stayed strong during this difficult time. My thoughts are with him and his family, with whom I hope he will be reunited soon,” U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who attended Monday’s sentencing, said in a statement.

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