The head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that the global financial crisis was far from over despite a recent slight thaw in the key credit markets.

`The credit freeze is no longer as hard as it was,` said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but added: `There is a bit of circulation (of credit) but not enough for the system to function well.

`The interbank (lending) market is not back up and running, far from it,` he told the French independent consultative body, the Economic and Social Council.

At the same time, the financial crisis was now becoming an economic crisis which would last at least until the end of 2009.

The interbank market, on which banks lend to one another to raise key short term funding, has frozen in the aftermath of the collapse of several major US financial institutions in September.