India’s G20 presidency: Let’s be more ambitious
G20 meetings seem to be degenerating into a juvenile game of passing the parcel. Most theme-oriented working groups have been unable to agree on a communique, with the task left to non-controversial huddles, like on startups.
Even the third meeting under the G20 aegis of finance ministers and central bank governors (FMCBGs), which ended in Gandhinagar on Tuesday, issued only an outcome document and a chair’s summary. A communique requires consensus, but the Ukraine shadow has split the gathering along sharply drawn lines, hurting prospects of unanimity.
And so, the chair of the second-most important G20 grouping, Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, exercised the next best option: the gathering passed that buck to the leaders’ summit in September. What is encouraging, though, is the fact that the FMCBG meeting was united on almost every other item on the agenda, which included reforms of multilateral development banks (MDBs), a shared regulatory framework for crypto-assets, the path ahead for equity in taxation rules and an acknowledgement of macroeconomic risks arising from climate change and the necessary transition path.
Among these key issues of global governance, MDB reform will likely be the Indian G20 presidency’s showpiece, since it initiated the process by setting up a committee headed by Larry Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University, and N.K. Singh, former Indian bureaucrat and chairperson of the 15th finance commission.
The panel has now submitted the report’s first volume (the second and final part is expected in October), which was accepted unanimously by the FMCBG conclave. Members particularly endorsed the ‘G20 Roadmap for Implementing the Recommendations of the G20 Independent Review of
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