Overcoming the economic crisis the world is facing requires not the simple and quick solution used by the governments of many countries, but difficult, and still no less necessary structural reforms. This conclusion was made by the finance ministers and heads of central banks of G20 countries, a meeting of which was held yesterday in Shanghai, under the chairmanship of China.
"The acceleration of structural reforms could become a source of potential growth in the medium term and will contribute to greater stability and flexibility of the economy," RIA Novosti cites the communiqué, issued after the meeting.
This thesis was confirmed by the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde, who also participated in this meeting. "The launch of structural reforms is a critical element of the necessary policies, and I welcome the G20's decision to include this direction as a priority," she stated.
As the representative of the Russian delegation noted, the majority of participants of the event agreed that the current situation in the global economy is forcing all international organizations to revise their forecasts for 2016-2017 in a negative way. In particular, if the G20 summit in Brisbane in 2014 set the aim of achieving a 2.1% increase in global growth of GDP by 2018, then now it can only reach a maximum of 0.8% growth.
The participants in the meeting also discussed such an issue as the fight against financing of terrorism. "We intend to resolutely fight against financing of terrorism. We will intensify our efforts to fight the sources, technologies and channels of financing of terrorists and strengthen our cooperation on the exchange of information. We urge all countries to join these efforts," the communiqué says.
At the same time, the 'Twenty' has instructed the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) to check how the requirements of this organization correspond to the current level of terrorist threat.
As the representative of Russia noted, it was previously an issue of small terrorist organizations, and it was clear how to deal with them. "But here, the situation concerns terrorist groups that control territories of entire countries," he stressed.
The report of the FATF will likely be presented by the summer of this year.
