A meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, held on the sidelines of the G20 summit, overshadowed the very meeting of the Group itself. Yesterday, this gap was filled by the personal representative of the president (sherpa) in the G20, Svetlana Lukash.
According to her, the key results became the agreements in the sphere of the economy supporting measures, ensuring its sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth. In Hamburg, the measures to confront the protectionism, promote a global trading system based on rules, including bilateral, regional and plurilateral, consistent with the WTO norms, which is advantageous to everyone, were agreed.
Speaking about an ensuring of the financial sustainability and stability of the world economy, Lukash noted: "We believe that the subject of a financial cooperation within the G20 is the most successful track of work for all the years. President Putin, speaking at the first session of the summit, noted an importance of the financial reforms, especially in the sphere of the financial settlement, as well as the role played by the Financial Stability Board to ensure the cooperation of the financial regulators and maintain a resilient to the further possible crises and balanced financial system."
Svetlana Lukash
In addition, the issues of a new digital economy, industrial revolution, which is now transforming the global markets, and the ways to promote an innovative economic growth were discussed at the summit. "This year the German Presidency has managed to make significant progress in discussing the technical and practical aspects of how to assess the digital economy, what consequences can be for all our countries, and how to agree on the common approaches to a cooperation and regulation in this area. Another issue of the regulating the digital economy was the topic of ensuring and protecting the rights of consumers in this field, ensuring the digital literacy as a key element in the ability of consumers to protect their interests and ensure competition in the digital environment ", the sherpa said.
According to her, all the leaders underscored that the world economy has begun to grow and the trade volumes have been being restored. ‘’The dynamics of the trade growth shows the serious good results. A key decision is the G20 framework agreement on a sustainable, confident and balanced growth, made back in 2010. As a part of this framework agreement, the countries coordinate the macroeconomic policies, discuss the measures for implementing of the structural reforms. In 2014, all the countries were committed to develop the national growth strategies that would allow to increase the total GDP of the G20 countries by 2% by 2018. These national growth strategies include a package of the measures for the structural reforms in various fields - investment, trade, labor markets, competition and the macroeconomic policies. The international organizations are skeptical about a possibility of achieving the goal of two-percent growth by 2018, but it can not be explained by the fact that the measures being taken are insufficient. The point is that these structural reforms produce a deferred effect. In the perspective of 2-3 years, our national growth strategies will give an obligatory jump in the GDP growth, and the structural reforms envisaged there will be implemented in full. This year, the German Presidency initiated a development of the sustainability principles that allow us to determine the best recommendations for various sectors of the economy on implementing the structural reforms and other measures that help to accelerate the growth.’’
Svetlana Lukash also said an issue of migration was a priority for Chancellor Merkel at the summit. ‘’In Europe, a migration crisis has erupted, associated with a large influx of refugees from the conflict zones. The G20 this year worked on the economic aspects of migration, how to integrate the migrants to the labor markets of the host countries, ensure their rights, their social protection, access to the financial services, so to integrate the migrants as much as possible to the host countries’ markets".
A serious attention, including in the coordination of the final documents of the summit, was paid to the fight against terrorism. "The G20 statement on the combating terrorism was issued on the first day of the summit. This is a second precedent of this kind. In 2014, the Turkish Presidency in Antalya also facilitated the issuing of a separate statement on this topic, which was, by the way, very successful, and we are grateful to our Turkish counterparts for providing leadership on this issue. This year it also became possible to outline the certain directions and common approaches to this key issue, " the sherpa said.
