Representing the world’s leading developed and developing economies, the G-20 leaders on Sunday opined against premature withdrawal of the support measures initiated by the various countries to boost the Covid-hit economy.

The leaders, according to a declaration issued at the end of the G-20 summit, committed themselves to work together to monitor and address challenges facing the global economy and take steps to support stability of the global economy.

Over 2021, global economic activity has been recovering at a solid pace, thanks to the roll-out of vaccines and continued policy support, said the G20 Rome Leaders’ Declaration.

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However, the recovery remains divergent across and within countries, and exposed to downside risks, in particular the possible spread of new variants of Covid-19 and uneven vaccination paces.

“We remain vigilant to the global challenges that are impacting on our economies, such as disruptions in supply chains. We will work together to monitor and address these issues as our economies recover and to support the stability of the global economy,” said the G20 Rome Leaders’ Declaration.

The G20 nations further said they will continue to sustain the recovery, avoiding any premature withdrawal of support measures, while preserving financial stability and long-term fiscal sustainability and safeguarding against downside risks and negative spill-overs.

The leaders also reiterated their commitment to strengthening long-term financial resilience and supporting inclusive growth, including through promoting sustainable capital flows, developing local currency capital markets and maintaining a strong and effective Global Financial Safety Net with a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced IMF at its centre.

“We look forward to the forthcoming review of the IMF’s Institutional View on the liberalisation and management of capital flows, informed, among others, by the Integrated Policy Framework.

“We remain committed to revisiting the adequacy of IMF quotas and will continue the process of IMF governance reform under the 16th General Review of Quotas, including a new quota formula as a guide, by 15 December 2023,” the declaration said.

As per the declaration, the leaders also reaffirmed commitment to enhancing digital financial inclusion of vulnerable and underserved segments of society, including micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), carrying forward the work of the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) and implementing the G20 2020 Financial Inclusion Action Plan.

The nations, the declaration said, affirmed the important role of open, fair, equitable, sustainable, nondiscriminatory and inclusive rules-based multilateral trade system in restoring growth, job creation and industrial productivity and promoting sustainable development, as well as our commitment to strengthen it with the WTO at its core.

“Recalling the Riyadh Initiative on the future of the WTO, we remain committed to working actively and constructively with all WTO Members to undertake the necessary reform of the WTO, improving all its functions, and we highlight the need to implement this commitment in practice through an inclusive and transparent approach including tackling the development issues,” the G20 nations said.

They will also support reaching a meaningful WTO agreement on harmful fisheries subsidies by the WTO 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), in line with the SDG 14.6, and we welcome the ongoing work on agriculture.

Financial regulations

On financial regulations, the declaration said that while the global financial system has been largely resilient, gaps in the regulatory framework remain which “we are committed to addressing, including by completing the remaining elements of the G20 regulatory reforms agreed after the 2008 financial crisis”.

“We are also committed to strengthening the resilience of the non-bank financial intermediation (NBFI) sector with a systemic perspective, and reducing the need for extraordinary central bank interventions, by implementing the FSB NBFI work programme,” the declaration said.

The G20 leaders said it will strengthen its social protection systems to reduce inequalities, eradicate poverty, support worker transitions and reintegration in labour markets and promote inclusive and sustainable growth.

The declaration also talks about improving data availability and provision, including on environmental issues, and harnessing the wealth of data produced by digitalization is critical to better inform our decisions.

The countries took note of the work done so far by the IMF, in close cooperation with the FSB and the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) towards a possible new G20 Data Gaps Initiative.

The leaders said they will continue to promote agile regulatory frameworks and will provide digital public services that are human-centric, proactive, easy to use and accessible to all.

“We welcome the novel emphasis on secure, interoperable and trusted digital identity solutions that can provide better access to public and private sector services while promoting privacy and personal data protection. We will pursue further work on designing digital identity tools, deployable also in emergency scenarios,” G20 said.

Recognizing that sustainable investment in quality digital infrastructure can greatly contribute to reducing the digital divide, the G20 leaders said they will promote universal, and affordable access to connectivity for all by 2025.

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