IMF's Lagarde urges Germany to spend more, aid recovery

International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Christine Lagarde urged Germany to increase investments to help spur the eurozone's flagging economic recovery, adding that the bloc as a whole needed to make more structural reforms.

With the eurozone economy in the doldrums, the European Central Bank announced on Thursday a series of measures to stimulate growth, with its president Mario Draghi expanding on a call for governments to support this process with extra spending.

Echoing that sentiment, Lagarde told daily Les Echos in an interview the process could be aided by Germany, which is borrowing at record-low rates and on track to record a public sector surplus for the third year running.

"We think that public or private investment (in Germany) to finance infrastructure would be welcome," she said, stressing this did not mean making the German economy less competitive.

Asked in a second interview on Radio Classique whether Germany could do more to spur a European economic recovery, Lagarde told the radio: "It seems to us at the International Monetary Fund that it (Germany) can go a bit further, that it can do a bit more, in Germany's interest."

Under pressure from major eurozone peers like Italy and France to boost public investment and cut taxes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has left the door open to channelling the budget surplus into spending programs.

She said investments would take priority if Germany had money available but the government first had to see how the economy developed.

Germany's 2015 budget projects no net new borrowing for the first time since 1969.

Lagarde told Radio Classique all the bloc's member states needed to go further than existing economic reforms by creating more flexible labour markets and...