Hank Paulson, the US treasury secretary, will not attend next week’s meeting of the Group of Eight finance ministers in Potsdam, Germany, US officials said on Friday.

The move underscores the declining importance of the regular cycle of meetings between the finance ministers of the main industrialised economies – on this occasion, plus Russia – which once dominated global economic policymaking.

Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister, went on holiday in Namibia rather than attending the last Group of Seven meeting in Washington in April, even though his country was set to chair the meeting.

Like Mr Steinbrück, Mr Paulson will send his deputy, Bob Kimmit, to attend the summit.

A spokesperson for Mr Paulson said he was unable to attend because of pressing congressional business, including legislation on the Cfius process that vets foreign takeovers of US companies on national security grounds, and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored home finance institutions.

Mr Paulson will also be preparing to receive a large delegation of leading Chinese officials the following week as part of the Strategic Economic Dialogue between the two countries, one of his top policy priorities.

China is not a member of the G7 or the G8, although it is typically invited to take part in some discussions along with other leading emerging economies.

A Treasury official insisted the decision by Mr Paulson not to attend the summit in Germany should not be seen as retaliation for Mr Steinbrück’s decision not to attend the prior summit in Washington. “Nobody is that petty,” the official said.

The official said: “I think what it shows is that we live in a world of very easy communications all of the time, so the need to be in the same room four times a year is less than it was.”

“This is not saying the countries do not matter or that co-ordination does not matter,” the official said, but that it was no longer as necessary to rely on a regular cycle of group meetings to achieve this.

However, Mr Paulson is known to take a modest view as to what can be achieved by the G7 or G8 finance ministers in a world of deep, liquid and globally integrated capital markets.

He does not, for instance, think it is credible for these groups to try to set the values of widely traded currencies such as the dollar, euro and yen, as they once did in pacts such as the Plaza Accord and Louvre Accord.

Many experts say the G7/G8 should be expanded to bring in the world’s leading emerging economies such as China, at least for meetings of finance ministers, to more adequately represent the new balance of economic power in the world.

The US, though, does not have a formal position on possible reform of these longstanding groups.