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Economists are fond of speaking about second best solutions so it was perhaps not surprising that my friend and former colleague Shahrokh Fardoust, one of three editors of a new World Bank volume on the G-20 development agenda, invoked this familiar idea in the face of a friendly but pointed critique of the G-20 by CGD/Peterson joint fellow Arvind Subramanian.
IMF governance reforms were agreed the week before the G20 Summit. One decision – to increase IMF resources but not by much – may matter for the IMF’s role in a still-unsettled Eurozone – if Ireland’s problem becomes Portugal’s and so on.
For a full and nicely balanced assessment of the reforms from Ted Truman, including on resources, go here. Among other things, unpacks a couple of little-known and little-understood facts that are (though he doesn’t say so directly) about the role of the USA – the poor man with good ideas.
Perhaps predictably, media coverage of the G-20 Seoul Summit focused on the currency wars, and assessments of impact of the meeting were decidedly mixed (though, interestingly, more negative in the United States than in the big emerging markets). But global imbalances were hardly the only item on the agenda. Three summit documents have the potential to become more important with the passage of time, especially if the development community seizes upon them as opportunities to press the big economies for pro-development policies and spreads the word.
There actually seems to be hope that next week’s G20 summit will move beyond the tired mantra to finish the Doha Round and give a push to the Millennium Declaration commitment to provide duty-free, quota-free market access for the world’s poorest countries. This is an opportunity to contribute to job creation and growth when the global economy is still fragile. Furthermore, it would have minimal impact on importing countries since the least-developed countries account for around 1 percent of global trade.
Following my recent post on the G-20 development agenda and the upcoming Seoul Summit, several readers wrote asking if I had a list of the members of the Development Working Group. I starting asking around and was pleased to be able to obtain one. Of course, it would have been more useful if it had been released sooner, along with contact information for the members.
Last weekend’s communiqué from the G-20 finance ministers is a first step to bridge the divide in the ongoing currency wars. I find both hope and disappointment in the Communiqué. It is very positive that the G-20 ministers have called for the IMF to help identify countries with policies leading to large and unsustainable imbalances. This is a step in the right direction, although no specific quantitative indicators have yet been advanced.
Reports of progress last weekend notwithstanding, the so-called currency wars—the reality and threat of competitive devaluations—are likely to continue to dominate the news about the upcoming Seoul G-20 Summit.
This post is joint with Enrique Rueda-Sabater
Moving from the clearly obsolete G-7 to a broader group that reflects the reality of today’s world makes eminent sense. Doing it on the basis of a grouping improvised during the crisis-before-last (and making sure that it included the then-favorite finance ministers of the U.S. and Canadian sponsors) is squandering the opportunity to move up to a credible, transparent, global governance platform.
This blog post also appeared The Guardian's Global Development blog.
When Seoul hosts the G-20 in November, development issues will be squarely on the agenda for the first time since the top steering group for the global economy was created in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, according to Ho-young Ahn, South Korea’s Ambassador at large for the G-20.
Here is what I liked about President Obama’s UN speech on development last week, what I liked less, and what to watch for next. I conclude with an epilogue on this week’s historic gathering of secretaries Clinton, Gates, and Geithner, USAID Administrator Shah, and Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Daniel Yohannes for the U.S.
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