Russia prepares for G20

By Vestnik Kavkaza

In a week's time, St. Petersburg will host the G20 summit – the forum of international cooperation on the most important aspects of international economic and financial agenda. The leaders of G20 will discuss the program of their development.

G20 duties in the development sphere for 2010-2013 have been 50% implemented, Russian Sherpa in G20, head of the Expert Presidential Department, Ksenia Yudayeva, believes. The development program for G20 was adopted in 2010, and this year most it should be fulfilled. According to Yudayeva, 33 obligations have been fulfilled out of 67; 33 other obligations are being implemented; and one has been postponed. This is the G20’s obligation in the sphere of energy and transport infrastructure’s development.

Russia chairs G20 at the moment. It will presents in St. Petersburg a report on fulfillment of the development program of G20. “When we prepared the document, we had no goal to appraise contributions of various countries into the process,” Andrey Bokarev, director of the International Financial Affairs Department of the Ministry of Finances, says. “As the chairman of the working group on development which prepared the document, I could say that the group on development had 10 priority spheres. One country cannot intensively work and provide leading, coordinating functions in all 10 directions simultaneously. Different countries contribute to discussion of food safety, some countries are more interested in infrastructural issues, others in accessibility to financial services, and so on. The document isn’t developed by the International Department of the Russian Ministry of Finances. It is teamwork of the whole working group on development of G20 countries, our partners, and international organizations.”

The central goal of Russian chairmanship is to focus efforts of the major world economies’ forum on development of measures on key economic and financial problems which influence the economic growth and creating jobs in all countries of the world. Settlement of the problems should be provided, according to Moscow, through three directions – encouragement of investments, providing trust and transparency at markets, and improvement of management efficiency.

Russia’s term as a chair runs out on November 30th. The next chair will be Australia, which will be replaced by Turkey in a year. Today Turkey is the chair of the group on reform of the world financial architecture of G20. “In this role it is very important,” the deputy minister of finances of Russia, Sergey Storchak, thinks. “The agenda of the reform of the world financial architecture includes discussion of the reform of the International Monetary Fund, fulfillment of Seoul agreements on shifts in distribution of quotas, as well as issues connected with new approaches toward sovereign debt management, responsible lending of countries, and cooperation between the IMF and regional financial mechanisms. All these questions are considered in the working group headed by Turkish colleagues.”

Answering the question on prospects of discussing the situation over Syria in St. Petersburg, Ksenia Yudayeva stated: “Probably the topic will be discussed in bilateral meetings. On the other hand, we have no signals that this topic should be included into agenda of the sessions. Of course, I understand that Syria is a very important problem which is being heavily discussed today, but we have a lot of other important issues to discuss.”