Aurelia Butler

This is the first time India will host such a powerful group of world leaders. The capital has been adorned with ornamental flowers and fountains at traffic roundabouts while public buildings and sidewalks have been given a fresh coat of paint.Security is being provided by anti-drone systems, cutouts of langurs to scare away monkeys and 130,000 police and para-military personnel.WHAT IS THE G20?The world’s 20 major countries formed an economic grouping after the Asian financial crisis in 1999 with the understanding that such crises could no longer be contained within a nation’s borders and required better international economic cooperation. The bloc currently accounts for 80% of global gross domestic production (GDP) and 75% of international trade.Its members include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.Although only treasury chiefs met in the initial years, heads of all member nations decided to meet once a year for a leaders’ summit post the 2008 financial crisis.WHAT ARE THE KEY ISSUES THIS YEAR?Under India’s year-long presidency, the bloc has centred discussions around more loans to developing nations from multilateral institutions, reforming international debt architecture, regulations on cryptocurrency and the impact of geopolitical uncertainties on food and energy security.So far this year, the bloc has failed to issue any joint statements as it is deeply divided over language referring to the war in Ukraine.While Russia and China are against blaming Moscow for the war in Ukraine, Western countries including the United States, France and Canada have sought a strong condemnation as a necessary condition for a joint statement.SUMMIT THEMEIndia’s G20 theme is derived from the Sanskrit phrase “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” which translates to “The World is One Family”.WHEN AND WHERE IS THE NEXT MEETINGIndia will hand over the presidency to Brazil on December 1. More

BEIJING (Reuters) -Premier Li Qiang will lead China’s delegation at a G20 summit in New Delhi this weekend, China’s foreign ministry said on Monday, indicating President Xi Jinping would not attend and scuppering chances of a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden there.The Sept. 9-10 summit had been seen as a venue for a possible meeting between Xi and Biden, who has confirmed his attendance in New Delhi, following months of efforts by the two powers to stabilise ties frayed by trade and geopolitical tensions.”The G20 is the main forum for international economic cooperation and China has always placed great importance on and proactively taken part in such events,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a press conference, when asked by a reporter why China’s “leader” would not attend.Mao declined to directly confirm that Li’s attendance meant that Xi would not go, although she did not correct reporters who made that assertion. Reuters reported exclusively last month that Xi was likely to skip the meeting and send Li.Li leading the delegation at the G20 meeting makes it all but certain that Xi will not be going since China would not have both its president and premier abroad at the same time, let alone at the same event.Biden said on Sunday that he was disappointed Xi was not going to the summit but added that he was going to “get to see him”. Biden did not elaborate.Xi last met Biden on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Indonesia in November.Germany, Europe’s largest economy, also “regrets” Xi’s decision not to attend, a spokesperson for its government said on Monday.This will be the first time that a Chinese president has missed a leaders’ summit since the first edition was held in 2008, though in 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi attended virtually. Also absent from the New Delhi summit will be Russian President Vladimir Putin, following an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for him over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Russia will be represented by its foreign minister. The other G20 leaders attending include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.’SETTING HIS OWN AGENDA’Wen-Ti Sung, political scientist at the Australian National University, pointed out that Xi had joined a meeting in South Africa last month of leaders of the BRICS group of major emerging economies.”Xi’s skipping the West-heavy club of G20 right after attending the BRICS summit may be a visual illustration of Xi’s narrative of ‘East is rising, and the West is falling’, as well as showing solidarity with Russia’s President Putin who is also not attending,” Sung said.The other venue where Xi and Biden could meet would be November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco.Senior U.S. officials have travelled to China in recent months to strengthen communications amid concern that their friction could spiral out of control.U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the most recent official to have visited China, said the U.S. does not want to decouple from China.Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said Xi might be reluctant to travel abroad, given his focus on domestic issues.”Xi Jinping is setting his own agenda where his top concern is national security and he has to stay in China and make foreign leaders visit him instead,” Wu said.”But if Xi skips APEC, that would be very substantial after all the preparations made for it by the U.S. side, and it would reflect even more badly on China’s future and its international standing, since it still needs foreign investment.”Xi’s absence from the G20 gathering could also be seen as a snub of host India, say some analysts, suggesting it could be a signal that China is unwilling to confer influence on its southern neighbour that boasts one of the fastest growing major economies while China’s slows. Ties between India and China have been also troubled for more than three years after soldiers from both sides clashed on their disputed Himalayan frontier in June 2020, resulting in 24 deaths. More

REHOBOTH BEACH, Delaware (Reuters) – President Joe Biden travels to Philadelphia on Monday to mark U.S. Labor Day in a political battleground state where the White House hopes his emphasis on worker-friendly policies will help propel Biden to another victory in 2024.After visiting Florida on Saturday to survey damage from Hurricane Idalia before going to his home state of Delaware, Biden, a Democrat, plans to speak at an AFL-CIO union group event in neighboring Pennsylvania, a state that helped him defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Biden describes himself as a pro-union president, and the White House has sought in recent months to sell his economic policies under the moniker of “Bidenomics” to a public worried about the economy, despite easing inflation and low unemployment levels.Republicans counter that Democratic policies helped spark the higher prices that have cost Americans more when paying for rent, groceries and gasoline under Biden’s watch.The Fed has raised rates by 5.25 percentage points since March 2022 and the 30-year mortgage rate now stands above 7%. Inflation by the Fed’s preferred gauge, however, has moved down to 3.3% from its peak of 7% last summer. Although the decline was a “welcome development,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said late last month, inflation “remains too high” and the Fed might need to raise interest rates further.U.S. job growth picked up in August, but the unemployment rate jumped to 3.8% and wage gains moderated, according to data released by the Labor Department last week. The labor market is slowing in response to the central bank’s rate hikes.The White House notes inflation-adjusted income is up 3.5% since Biden came into office in January 2021, with lower-wage workers benefiting, and the unemployment rate is close to a 50-year low.In an opinion piece published ahead of Labor Day in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Biden highlighted his administration’s proposal to extend overtime pay to some 3.6 million Americans and praised unions for being good for the economy.”Every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job, raise their family on a good paycheck, and keep their roots where they grew up,” he wrote. “That’s why Bidenomics is anchored in what’s always worked best for our country: investing in America’s workers, the real heroes of our story.”Economic issues are likely to play a critical role in the 2024 presidential race. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed that the economy, unemployment and jobs remained Americans’ top concern. A full 60% of Americans, including one in three Democrats, said they disapproved of Biden’s handling of inflation, according to the poll.Pennsylvania and a handful of other political battleground states that fluctuate between supporting Democrats and Republicans in presidential elections will help determine who leads the country after next year. More

MUMBAI (Reuters) -The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will be able to gradually shift away from its easy monetary policy only after ensuring its 2% inflation goal has been sustainably achieved, former board member Goushi Kataoka said on Monday.Kataoka expected the Spring 2024 wage negotiations to be key for the BOJ’s inflation mission, Kataoka, currently chief economist at PwC Japan, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.”Next year’s wage negotiations will require nominal wages to rise at least as much as this year’s to confirm a virtuous cycle of income, spending and prices,” he said, adding an exit from easy policy won’t be possible “until after next year.”Once it begins exiting policy, Kataoka expects the BOJ to first remove the peg on the 10-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yield, then exit its negative interest rate policy, and finally scrap the YCC policy.Kataoka described the central bank’s move in July to allow long-term rates to rise more as a “bad decision,” saying there were no particular distortions observed in the bond market, unlike in December 2022, when the BOJ made a surprise tweak to its bond yield control under then governor Haruhiko Kuroda.”Allowing the guide rate to effectively go as low as 1% would not be possible until the 2% (inflation) target is achieved,” Kataoka said.The BOJ said the July action was aimed at making its yield curve control (YCC) more sustainable, but markets saw the move as another step towards the central bank dialling back its massive stimulus programme.Kataoka said a recovery in Japanese production and domestic consumption was still only gradual, and that the government had not been very active in increasing the public’s disposable income.”I’m worried about the stance of Kishida cabinet,” he said, describing the previous administrations’ tax hikes in 2014 and 2019 as undermining the Kuroda’s bold monetary policy experiment.To achieve the 2% inflation target, “it is necessary for the Japanese government and central bank to cooperate with each other in terms of monetary and fiscal policies,” he said.Kataoka said the attractiveness of the Japanese economy to foreign investors stems from the devaluation of the yen.”The key word that characterises the Japanese economy this year, is … ‘first in 30 years’,” he said, as it finally re-emerges from long-term stagnation.(Join GMF, a chat room hosted on Refinitiv Messenger, for live interviews: ) More