Aurelia Butler

GANDHINAGAR, India (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday she was “eager” to work with China on areas of mutual interest, including debt restructurings for poorer countries, and that multilateral development banks needed reforms before capital increases could be considered.At a press conference before a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in India, Yellen said her visit to Beijing last week helped put the U.S.-China relationship on “surer footing” and that the world’s two biggest economies had an obligation to the world “to cooperate on areas of mutual concern”.”There is much more work to do. But I believe this trip was an important start,” Yellen said. “I am eager to build on the groundwork that we laid in Beijing to mobilise further action.”Concerns remain about China’s unfair trade practices, which prompted Washington to impose tariffs on Beijing. “They really have not been addressed,” she said.U.S. corporations want to see an environment where they could “invest and thrive in China”, Yellen said.Washington will continue to cut off Russia’s access to military equipment and technologies that Moscow needs in the invasion of Ukraine, Yellen said.”One of our core goals this year is to combat Russia’s efforts to evade our sanctions. Our coalition is building on the actions we’ve taken in recent months to crack down on these efforts,” she added.India, which chairs the G20 this year, has sought a largely neutral stance on the war, generally declining to blame Russia for the invasion Moscow launched in February last year, urging a diplomatic solution and sharply boosting its purchases of Russian oil even as Western nations seek to squeeze Moscow.Yellen said she would continue to push hard at the G20 meeting, in Gandhinagar in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat, for “full and timely participation of all bilateral official creditors on pending debt restructurings”.She said she discussed Zambia’s restructuring with her Chinese counterparts and, although it took too long to negotiate, differences were overcome.”We should apply the common principles we agreed to in Zambia’s case in other cases – rather than starting at zero every time. And we must go faster,” Yellen said, adding she hoped debt treatments for Sri Lanka and Ghana could be finalised quickly so the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could move forward with initial loan programme reviews this fall.She said a debt restructuring “user guide” was needed for borrowing countries and other stakeholders to provide clarity about the process.Yellen said the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth trust, which provides zero-interest loans to the world’s poorest countries, needed to be put on sounder financial footing. The U.S. Treasury is ready to assist the IMF to consider options for this, including using internal fund resources, she said.’BETTER BANKS’Yellen also laid out a number of next steps for the evolution of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, but said that any exploration of capital increases for the institutions can only be considered after implementing reforms aimed at expanding their role beyond poverty reduction to tackle global challenges such as climate change and pandemics.”We should build better banks, not just bigger banks,” Yellen said.She repeated her estimate that multilateral development banks could collectively boost lending by $200 billion over a decade from internal resources through balance sheet reforms now being implemented or considered. They could boost this further by implementing recommendations from last year’s G20 Capital Adequacy Framework report, she said.Among other World Bank reform steps, Yellen said she was pushing for a new set of principles that would allow the “targeted use” of the bank’s concessional financing for global challenges, including climate change and measures to boost such resources.She said she would like the World Bank to explore options for lending to sub-sovereign and supra-sovereign borrowers like the COVAX vaccine initiative.Yellen said the United States was committed to implementing a global corporate minimum tax deal reached in 2021 despite the lack of action by the U.S. Congress to do so. She said negotiations on technical details of the deal’s Pillar 1 – reallocation of taxing rights on large multinationals including big technology firms – were “very close” to completion. More

AUCKLAND (Reuters) -Members of a major trans-Pacific trade pact said on Sunday they were gathering information on China, Taiwan and other countries interested in joining the agreement to see whether they were able to meet the pact’s “high standards”.The comments followed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) meeting in Auckland where Britain formally signed the treaty to become a member and a decision to review and update the agreement was also made.Along with China and Taiwan, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Ecuador have also applied to join the pact. A decision on who will join and when will be made collectively.”The membership is currently undertaking an information-gathering process on whether aspirant economies can meet the CPTPP’s high standards, taking into account their experience on their trade commitments,” the members said in a joint statement.The CPTPP is a landmark trade pact agreed in 2018 between 11 countries including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Britain became the 12th member of the pact, which cuts trade barriers, as it looks to deepen ties in the Pacific after its exit from the European Union in 2020.”We continue to discuss how to move forward collectively on accession processes in a way that reflects all our interests and maintains the high standards,” the CPTPP statement said.China’s application to join the pact is now next in line if they are dealt with in the order they were received, but the country faces a number of hurdles to be included.The CPTPP requires countries to eliminate or significantly reduce tariffs, make strong commitments to opening services and investment markets and has rules around competition, intellectual property rights and protections for foreign companies.Damien O’Connor, New Zealand’s trade minister who chaired this CPTPP meeting, said at a press conference there was no time frame for when any decisions on future membership would be made.”It’s a complex area,” O’Connor said of membership applications, adding no single country’s application was discussed on Sunday. China has opposed Taiwan’s application.Earlier in the day, Britain signed the treaty to accede into the pact, although it still needs to be ratified by the country’s government.Britain’s Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said at the signing that her country was delighted to become the first new member of the CPTPP.”This is a modern and ambitious agreement and our membership in this exciting, brilliant and forward-looking bloc is proof that the UK’s doors are open for business,” Badenoch said. More

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will push its Group of 20 partners at a meeting it is hosting to support its proposal to raise the share of taxes multinational companies pay to countries where they earn “excess profits”, government officials said.India’s proposal, which has not been previously reported, could temper optimism among G20 members such as Australia and Japan that the meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Gujarat would make progress on a long-awaited overhaul of global corporate taxation.More than 140 countries were supposed to start implementing next year a 2021 deal overhauling decades-old rules on how governments tax multinationals. The present rules are widely considered outdated as digital giants like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) or Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) can book profits in low-tax countries.The deal, pushed by the U.S., would levy a minimum 15% tax on large global firms, plus an additional 25% tax on “excess profits”, as defined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).But several countries have concerns about the multilateral treaty underpinning a major element of the plan, and some analysts say the overhaul is at risk of collapse.”India has made suggestions to get its due share of taxing rights on excess profits of multinational companies,” one official said. The suggestions have been made to the OECD and will be discussed “extensively” during the G20 meeting on Monday and Tuesday, the official said.Three officials, who asked not to be named as discussions with the OECD were ongoing and the G20 meeting had not begun, said India wants significant increases in the tax paid in countries where the firms do business. They did not specify how much India is seeking.India’s finance and external affairs ministries and the OECD did not respond to requests for comment.Under the agreement, global corporations with annual revenues over 20 billion euros ($22 billion) are considered to be making excess profits if the profits exceed 10% annual growth. The 25% surcharge on these excess profits is to be divided among countries.India, fighting for a higher share of taxes for markets where firms do business, is the world’s most populous country and set to become one of the biggest consumer markets. Indian people’s average income is set to grow more than 13-fold to $27,000 by the end of 2047, according to a survey by the People’s Research on India’s Consumer Economy.The G20 host nation will also propose that withholding taxation be de-linked from the excess profit tax principle. The rules now say countries offset their share of taxes with the withholding tax they collect.Withholding tax is collected by companies while making payments to vendors and employees, and remitted to tax authorities. The OECD in a document issued on Wednesday said a few jurisdictions have expressed concerns over allocating taxing rights among countries. “Efforts to resolve these issues are underway with a view to prepare the Multilateral Convention for signature expeditiously,” it said.($1 = 82.0490 Indian rupees)($1 = 0.8907 euros) More