India said on Tuesday that G-20 finance chiefs and central bankers had made headway on the group’s ambitious agenda to reform the world’s financial architecture, despite differences over the war in Ukraine that surfaced during the talks.
“The Indian presidency received wide support on all the agenda items,” Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister, said after the conclusion of meetings in Gandhinagar.
Ajay Seth, another finance ministry official, also said that India was “taking the discourse forward” after top policymakers from the club of large economies met to discuss plans to overhaul multilateral lenders, forge an agreement on international taxation, and share the burden of restructuring poor countries’ debt.
India holds the G-20’s rotating presidency and is due to host a summit of its leaders in New Delhi in September at a time when the war in Ukraine has split a group that includes Russia and China, alongside the US and leading European economies.
Sitharaman confirmed that Russia’s exit on Monday from the Black Sea grain deal that ensured shipping of food from Ukraine — one of the world’s top agricultural producers — and subsequent attack on Ukrainian ports, had come up during Tuesday’s talks.
“Several members condemned it, saying this shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “Food passing through the Black Sea shouldn’t have been stopped or suspended.”
The deal had helped lower global food inflation in recent months and allayed concerns that hunger would become widespread.
However, Sitharaman said there were signs of progress on deals to provide more debt relief to some of the world’s most economically vulnerable countries, such as Sri Lanka, Zambia, and Ghana.
China, a major bilateral creditor, had been blamed by western nations, including the US, for delaying deals to restructure vulnerable countries’ debts. Beijing, which is the largest bilateral lender to several developing countries, had been reluctant to provide debt relief, up until recent weeks, when it agreed to provide some support to Zambia.
Sitharaman said she was now “very hopeful” that Beijing could be brought fully onboard in other debt restructurings. “We were able to push this agenda of debt distress, particularly among the Global South countries,” Sitharaman said. “A speedy resolution, an effective resolution should happen.”
India has hosted G-20 ministerial meetings across the country in the run-up to the leaders’ summit on September 9-10.
It has faced, however, difficulties in trying to hammer out consensus among the bloc’s members at a time of war, financial distress in some indebted countries and slowdown in most leading economies.
India has remained neutral in the war. But it has been vocal about the conflict’s impact on countries in the Global South, of which it sees itself as a leader, while trying to bridge differences between Russia and China on the one hand and western democracies that have supported Ukraine and sanctioned Moscow.
India is also pushing the group to accept the African Union as a full member during its presidency.
Amitabh Kant, India’s G-20 Sherpa, told the Financial Times in an interview last week that India had invited all the G-20 leaders to September’s summit, and that it expected them all, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, to attend.
“We are expecting all leaders to come,” Kant said. “We haven’t heard from anyone that they’re not coming.” China’s finance minister and Russia’s acting finance ministry director attended this week’s G-20 meetings.
Source: Economy - ft.com
