G20 Summit | Grand show, no deal https://www-deccanherald-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/opinion%2Fg20-summit-grand-show-no-deal-2682528 Subhash Chandra Garg 12 September 2023 India rustled up and announced two new international alliances — the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and the Global Biofuel Alliance. India produced the longest-ever Leaders’ Declaration with 83 paragraphs and 39 annexed documents running into thousands of pages. However, there is no single ready-to-implement agreement/actionable point in it.
The G20 Summit at the president’s/prime minister’s level was borne in the global financial crisis in 2008 to co-ordinate immediate rescue of the international financial system, and find durable solutions for its stability to generate sustained economic growth. In the last 15 years, the G20 succeeded in delivering at least three major real deals. First, quick, and functional co-ordination smothered the global financial crisis and spawned new institutions and rules to bring about better financial stability. Second, the G20 built consensus on major taxation reforms, ushered in the Multilateral Convention on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS-MLI), and agreements on minimum taxation of multinational corporations and taxation of digital economies. Third, it did thrash out deals for infusion of capital in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The G20 Leaders’ Summit, however, got diverted into numerous other tracks — growth, taxation, trade, global warming, financial inclusion, infrastructure, digital economy, terrorism, money laundering, and everything under the sun. Instead of finding solutions for the big and pressing economic and financial problems, it degenerated into a body that produced a lot of verbiage.