Economic recovery may come three months earlier than forecast, the head of the International Monetary Fund said, but policymakers expressed concern that it may not last if governments reverse stimulus programmes too early.

"For the (global) economy, we have been saying for a year that the recovery will come in the first half of 2010. It might even be a quarter ahead," IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper.

"We are seeing the end of the tunnel, but we are still in crisis," he said in the interview published today.

A senior member of the European Central Bank said in an interview also published today that financial markets might be reacting too optimistically to recent data.

"An overreaction to this data is not good, because it could make us forget that governments still face a very significant agenda of reforms. And without completing those reforms we won't return to sustainable paths of growth," ECB Executive Board Member Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo told Spain's Expansion newspaper.