LECCE, Italy–The world's rich nations will ask the International Monetary Fund to study ways of unwinding the drastic steps taken to rescue the global economy, a source with knowledge of the plan said today.

The source, who declined to be named, said finance ministers of the Group of Eight nations would request the study in a communiqué to be released on Saturday, after two days of talks in the southern Italian town of Lecce.

The move would not mean countries will quickly roll back the drastic easing of budget and monetary policies that they have put in place during the global economic crisis.

But it does suggest they feel an economic recovery is in sight, and that they want to reassure financial markets they can manage the recovery without unleashing a wave of inflation.

A leap in long-term government bond yields over the past several weeks shows markets fear the huge sums of public money pumped into economies will eventually fuel inflation and damage governments' finances for years to come.

Pressure has therefore been building in the G8 for talks on ways to wind down stimulus programmes as soon as they are no longer needed – "exit strategies" that would prevent market interest rates from rising high enough to threaten economic recovery.

"The IMF report will be probably presented at the (IMF's) October annual meeting in Istanbul," the source told Reuters.

The IMF study could provide governments with some political cover when they eventually start making painful cuts in state spending to bring budget deficits under control, and when central banks begin to raise interest rates back up from near-zero levels.

The German and Canadian finance ministers on Friday urged the G8 to hold its first talks on exit strategies.

"It's time to have a discussion on how to disengage from the fiscal stimulus. It's realistic to start talking about the exit strategy," said Canada's Jim Flaherty.

"I don't expect an agreement," he added. "These are early discussions."

Because of its historical experience with hyperinflation, Germany is one of Europe's most fiscally conservative countries. Berlin's upper house of parliament passed new measures on Friday to prop up confidence in government finances, restricting new debt issuance by German states from 2020.

But other countries are less enthusiastic about talking about exit strategies and less convinced that the worst of the economic slump is over.

Euro zone industrial production shrank by more than a fifth in April, new data showed on Friday, raising risks that the second quarter will be weaker than expected.

"There are risks to doing it (withdrawing stimulus) too late and also to doing it too quickly," another official source from a major European economy told Reuters.

"Now is not the time because you will only worsen things if you begin while the economy is still falling."

Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke has said the United States must start planning to restore fiscal balance. But U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that although he wants to "take stock" of recovery efforts, stimulus work is not yet finished.

"The dominant focus of policy everywhere – everywhere – still is on trying to make sure we have a strong foundation for recovery," Geithner told a news briefing earlier this week.

The G8 groups the United States, Germany, Japan, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia.