G20 Leaders Pledge To Support Poor Economies
Jakarta, Feb 19: The Group of 20 (G20) members have issued a joint commitment to ensure aid and support for poor and developing economies to assist their recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The commitment came on Friday night from the two-day G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting held here, with Indonesia serving as the host country.
The G20 members are committed to ensuring “access to safe, timely, equitable, and affordable vaccines, especially for low and middle-income countries,” Bank Indonesia’s Governor Perry Warjiyo read out the written joint statement in a press conference.
The statement also called for the members to contribute to the “strengthening of the global health architecture.” The G20 members recognized that the global economic recovery is ongoing, but at a different pace among countries.
Rising food and energy prices, potential interest rate hikes, supply chain disruptions, climate change disasters, and rising geopolitical tensions are among factors contributing to uneven recovery, according to the joint statement. After the Covid-19 outbreak, the G20 economies have provided support for emerging economies through debt suspension and external debt restructuring to poor and developing countries to back their capacity in handling the pandemic and increase debt management capacity, so that they can expedite their economic recovery.
“The G20 will continue to strive for concrete and transparent achievements in terms of encouraging the settlement of the poor and developing countries’ debts through the adoption of a Common Framework,” the joint statement read.
The finance ministers and central bank governors also reaffirmed the commitments of developed countries to immediately mobilize joint climate finance of 100 billion US dollars per year to meet the needs of developing countries.
The pledge from wealthy countries to allocate the annual climate finance to help developing nations tackle and adapt to global heating dates back to 2009 and was intended to be fulfilled by 2020, the deadline established by the Paris Agreement.
Furthermore, to support the macroeconomic and financial system stability, the G20 economies have been committed to implementing measures to normalize the pandemic-related policies and overcome the long-term impact of the scarring effects caused by the pandemic.
