A host of new reforms agreed at the G20 meeting in Brisbane aims to lift global growth by 2.1 per cent over the next three years – although whether the club of world leaders will achieve its goals is up for dispute.
G20 countries promised more than 1,000 policy measures, of which 800 were new, according to a paper on the summit from the IMF and OECD. The estimated impact of the reform measures could hit US$2 trillion, the communique said.
“This year the G20 has delivered real and practical outcomes,” said Tony Abbott, the prime minister of Australia, announcing the results of the summit. “Because of the efforts the G20 has made this year, culminating in the last 48 hours, people right around the world are going to be better off.”
The communique said: “Our measures to lift investment, increase trade and competition and boost employment, along with our macroeconomic policies, will support development and inclusive growth, and help to reduce inequality and poverty.”
The slew of measures aims to reform “product and labour market regulations, tax structures, retirement incentives, unemployment benefits and labour taxation, as well as strengthening support for active labour market programmes, childcare provision, immigration, and research and development”, according to a paper from the IMF and OECD.
But the IMF and OECD report said that there was “a high degree of uncertainty entailed in quantifying the impact of members’ policies.
“The clarity and concreteness of measures has increased, although some measures remain that are insufficiently precise to allow for robust quantification of their impact,” the paper said.
G20 nations agreed to launch a “Global Infrastructure Hub”, an organisation based in Sydney that will help firms and governments share knowledge about infrastructure developments, in a bid to facilitate partnerships between the private and public sector.
The communique promised policies to combat youth unemployment and poverty, and to increase female participation in the labour force. It also offered support for the Green Climate Fund, aimed at reducing the impact of environmental regulation on growth in developing countries.
Measures to address tax avoidance were also mentioned, including automatic information- sharing between countries, and international standards for information disclosure.
KPMG, commenting on the communique, said that regulation was limiting the financial sector’s contribution to global growth.
Claiming that “a completely safe financial sector would be of little economic and social value”, KPMG called for G20 leaders to rethink the extent of financial sector regulation, and on banks to effect genuine “social and cultural change”.
Oxfam called on G20 leaders to do more on global inequality and tax avoidance.
“The G20 needs to commit to strategies of inclusive growth and take action to reduce inequality rather than narrowly focusing on GDP,” the Oxfam director Winnie Byanyima said.
G20 nations represent 85 per cent of the world’s GDP. Saudi Arabia is the only Middle Eastern G20 member state.
abouyamourn@thenational.ae
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