Manzoor Naik
The group G20 was established in 1999 in response to the Asian financial crisis and held its inaugural summit in 2008 to tackle the global recession. After the Second World War, the whole world became hostage to bipolar power centers led by the USA and USSR. This finally ended with the disintegration of USSR in the early years of 1990s after which, the USA remained more or less the exclusive centre of power. The latter half of 1990s witnessed gradual but significant changes in the international economic order with countries from the global south, especially China and India, emerging as key players in International Economic Arena. Simultaneously, the East Asian financial crisis of 1997 highlighted the need of greater economic cooperation between advanced countries and the developing countries. Multilateral forums to initiate an informal dialogue between advanced and emerging economies became an obvious necessity. In this backdrop, in September 1999, the finance ministers and the central banks governors of the group of eight countries (G-8) announced their intention to broaden the dialogue on key economic and financial policy issues among systematically significant economies and promote cooperation to achieve sustainable and stable world economic growth that benefits all. This announcement marked the official birth of what subsequently became known as the Group of Twenty Countries (the G-20).
The already existing G-8 group of countries, namely, USA, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada and Russia were joined by the eleven emerging and developing nations namely, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey and the European Union to form the G-20.
The G-20 meets once in a year, usually in the late autumn, to discuss international economic issues. This event has come to be known and “Leaders Summit” which brings together the Heads of the state of the member countries. In these meetings, discussions are undertaken by the “sherpas” the personal representatives of the leaders of each nation. They have been tasked by their leaders to negotiate the summits documents on their behalf. Thus, leaders’ declaration is finalized by sherpas. In this process, they also meet some other stakeholders such as the business community, academic institutions, and representatives of labour union, young people and civil society organizations in order to facilitate an inclusive and representative dialogue. Till date, eleven G-20 leaders’ Summits have been held in different member countries. The twelfth G-20 Summit will be held at Hamburg in Germany in 2017 and thirteenth at Buenos Aires in Argentina in 2018. The economic and political importance of G-20 can be gauged from the fact that after the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008, on the request of the US President, G-20 evolved as a crisis manager group making an effort to move towards economic and financial stability. However, development as an issue has not found any place in G-20 Agenda until the Leaders Summit in South Korea in 2010.
Although the initial focus of G-20 was on issues related to international financial stability, it has also examined a broad range of longer term economic issues of interests to its members. One of the key areas of emphasis of the G-20 is promotion of shared economic growth and sustainable development. G-20 is also trying to foster and adopt internationally recognized standards (through the example set by its members) in areas such as financial transparency, international tax cooperation and combating money laundering etc.
on September 4-5, the 11th G20 Summit held in Hangzhou, China. The theme of the Summit was “Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World economy”. Leaders from G20 member-states, guest countries, and heads of international organisations attended it. President Xi Jinping chaired the Summit and participated in a series of related activities. With the support of G20 member-countries, including India, the preparation for the Hangzhou Summit went on smoothly. China has also introduced some new important topics into the Summit agenda on top of the traditional ones.
First, innovation has been made one of the major topics in the Summit, in the hope that innovation can serve as a new driving forces for the world economy. Second, the importance of development has been highlighted, in the hope that G20 members can take the lead in implementing the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and set a good example for the international community. Third, the importance of structural reform has been stressed, in the hope that reform will solve deep-seated problems in the global economy. These topics were in line with the interests and needs of developing countries, especially emerging economies like India, and they are also consistent with the trends of world development. China received valuable support from all G20 member states, including India. G20 is the first global mechanism that allows developed and developing countries to take an equal part in global economic
governance.
