G20 meeting to tackle challenges

MELBOURNE – Preventing China and India’s rapid growth from destabilising global energy markets will head the agenda when the world’s most powerful economic officials meet in Melbourne this weekend.

Australia’s second largest city will host the Group of Twenty (G20) summit, an annual gathering where the world’s top finance ministers and central bankers discuss the challenges facing the global economy. While the G20 lacks the profile of other economic grouping, such as the G7 industrialised nations or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both supporters and sceptics rate it a major cog in the running of the world economy.”This is the biggest financial conference Australia has ever hosted and ever will,” the meeting’s chairman, Australian Treasurer Peter Costello said this week.”This organisation …brings together the developed world and the developing world (and) the 20 most important economies of the world.”Aid agency Oxfam said the G20 “has enormous potential to generate a coordinated response to some of the most pressing issues facing the world today, including the need to tackle extreme poverty”.Costello said November 18-19 meeting’s most pressing issue was ensuring world energy and commodity supplies remained secure so demand from China and India could be met without producing price shocks.Other issues up for discussion at the meeting – titled “Building and Sustaining Prosperity” – are making the International Monetary Fund and World Bank more relevant and minimising the impact of shifts in international demographics as the populations of many industrialised nations get older.Mark Thirlwell, an economist at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy, said there were also likely to be informal discussions about reviving stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on removing global trade barriers.Thirlwell said the G20, not to be confused with the identically named G20 grouping of developing nations, was formed in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis.He said there was a belief at the time that existing institutions responded inadequately to the crisis because they were dominated by major industrialised nations and lacked any meaningful input from the developing world.The architects of the G20 set out to address the problem by taking a more inclusive approach to its membership, he said.The G-20 includes the wealthy G7 nations – the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Britain and Canada – as well as the EU, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.Senior IMF and World Bank officials also attend G-20 meetings.Nampa-AFPWhile the G20 lacks the profile of other economic grouping, such as the G7 industrialised nations or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both supporters and sceptics rate it a major cog in the running of the world economy.”This is the biggest financial conference Australia has ever hosted and ever will,” the meeting’s chairman, Australian Treasurer Peter Costello said this week.”This organisation …brings together the developed world and the developing world (and) the 20 most important economies of the world.”Aid agency Oxfam said the G20 “has enormous potential to generate a coordinated response to some of the most pressing issues facing the world today, including the need to tackle extreme poverty”.Costello said November 18-19 meeting’s most pressing issue was ensuring world energy and commodity supplies remained secure so demand from China and India could be met without producing price shocks.Other issues up for discussion at the meeting – titled “Building and Sustaining Prosperity” – are making the International Monetary Fund and World Bank more relevant and minimising the impact of shifts in international demographics as the populations of many industrialised nations get older.Mark Thirlwell, an economist at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy, said there were also likely to be informal discussions about reviving stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on removing global trade barriers.Thirlwell said the G20, not to be confused with the identically named G20 grouping of developing nations, was formed in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis.He said there was a belief at the time that existing institutions responded inadequately to the crisis because they were dominated by major industrialised nations and lacked any meaningful input from the developing world.The architects of the G20 set out to address the problem by taking a more inclusive approach to its membership, he said.The G-20 includes the wealthy G7 nations – the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Britain and Canada – as well as the EU, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.Senior IMF and World Bank officials also attend G-20 meetings.Nampa-AFP