Developed world will slow down, emerging markets will grow: Indian G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant

PTI, Apr 2, 2023, 6:51 PM IST

Image credit: PTI / File

Kochi: India will play a lead role during its G20 presidency in redefining and reshaping the world which is facing multiple challenges, Indian Sherpa Amitabh Kant said here on Sunday.

Talking about the trend in the past 10 years, Kant told PTI that the developed world would slow down and emerging markets would grow. Resources should therefore flow from the former to the latter so that emerging markets improve, he said.

The G20 members represent around 85 per cent of global GDP, over 75 per cent of global trade, and about two-thirds of the world’s population.

Spelling out the challenges being faced by the world, Kant said this included slowdown affecting growth, 75 countries getting into global debt, millions of people becoming jobless and several millions falling below the poverty line.

”All these require very accelerated action by G20, and when G20 acts, the multilateral institutions act. Therefore, India will use this opportunity to redefine and reshape the world in many ways. And that is what we will try and do through the G20 presidency”, Kant told PTI.

A day after the second meeting of the G20 Sherpas (personal representatives of heads of governments at international summits) under India’s presidency concluded here in this lakeside village, Kant said by the time of the third meeting at Hampi in Karnataka, ”we will draft out a leaders’ communique”.

Noting that the G20 was a forum where major issues pertaining to economic growth, economic development, financial progress and developmental needs were addressed, Kant said, ”All these areas of growth — resilient and inclusive growth — a sustainable development goal, climate action and also digital transformation and women-led development…we will work out a complete communique, we will finally find a way through the leaders’ communique.”

The Indian Sherpa said, ”All countries want us to be very ambitious, they want us to be very inclusive, they want us to be very decisive — and therefore we will be very ambitious in our leaders’ communique that we will prepare”.

Kant said multilateral financial reforms were required as a lot of money available in the private sectors and institutional investors were not coming to emerging markets. He said the World Bank should have new instruments to allow such money to flow into emerging markets ”because in the future, all growth and all developments will happen in emerging markets.” According to him, the developed world would slow down and emerging markets would grow.

He said that in the past 10 years, the share of emerging markets had grown a lot and that it would keep growing while the share of the developed world would come down. ”So you need resources to flow from the developed world to emerging markets so that the productivity of emerging markets will improve”, Kant said.

Asked about the issues discussed, including the developed world’s commitment for a green development fund, he said in the 2009 Copenhagen Climate conference, in the name of climate justice, they had agreed to give USD 100 billion a year to developing countries. ”They have not lived up to it”, Kant said. During the four-day gathering of over 120 delegates from G20 members, 9 invitee countries, and various international and regional organisations, multilateral discussions on G20’s economic and developmental priorities as well as on addressing contemporary global challenges were held. The deliberations were focussed both on policy approaches and concrete implementation.

Stating that the the backwaters of Kerala provided a lot of peace and serenity to the Sherpas, he said the Kumarakom deliberations were ”very positive and very progressive”.

”Because of that we had done a sofa talk on the houseboat in the backwaters. For three-and-a-half hours all Sherpas were together and therefore everybody spoke his heart and mind out”, Kant said.

He said it was a very open free discussion and the good thing was that everybody could give their view points. ”I think we broke all ice between G7 countries and emerging markets. Russia, China, everybody came together because of the Kerala backwaters”, the Indian Sherpa said.

The deliberations of the Sherpa meetings will take forward the outcomes of various Sherpa Track and Finance Track Meetings, and will form the basis of the Leaders’ Declaration, slated to be adopted at the New Delhi Summit in September 2023.

India has selected its G20 priorities keeping in view the diverse global challenges of the day, the concerns of developing countries as well as the need for greater momentum for collective action to take forward the shared international agenda, especially the development and environment agenda.

Ongoing deliberations during India’s G20 Presidency include Green Development, Climate Finance & Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE); Accelerated, Inclusive & Resilient Growth; Accelerating progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Technological Transformation & Digital Public Infrastructure; Multilateral Institutions for the 21st century; and Women-led development. The Group of Twenty (G20) comprises 19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom and United States) and the European Union.