SA to participate in G20 meeting

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Pretoria - Finance Deputy Minister Nhlanhla Nene will lead a South African delegation to the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors this coming weekend.

South Africa will use the meeting, scheduled for 22 to 23 February, to encourage the global economic community to return to more cooperation and coordination through the G20.

“Our delegation will draw attention to the need for greater care in ensuring clear and consistent communication of policy actions by the very large economies. Recent events have demonstrated how financial markets, as one of the channels through which the interconnectivity of global economies takes place, can affect stability in emerging economies,” said the Ministry of Finance on Thursday.

The South African delegation will join fellow G20 member-countries in Sydney, Australia, for the very first meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors under the Presidency of Australia.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will not attend the meeting as he is preparing for the tabling of the 2014 budget in Parliament, next Wednesday.

This weekend’s meeting is an opportunity for G20 members to discuss the challenges of how to resolve the after-effects of the global financial crisis which began in 2008. The global economy is yet to fully recover from the crisis, noted the ministry.

Investment in infrastructure, how to build common growth strategies, a package of changes to financial sector regulation and a global standard on the automatic exchange of tax information and the next steps on the IMF reform agenda are among the issues tabled for discussion at the meeting.

Though the recent performance of the US  and Eurozone economies shows promise, the global economy remains constrained by weak global aggregate demand and underinvestment, both of which are important for sustainable global growth.

“South Africa will pay particular attention to the G20’s agenda for investment in infrastructure and its potential to support this agenda in sub-Saharan Africa. Like many emerging economies, South Africa remains concerned about the IMF reform process.

“We will therefore, reiterate concerns that the IMF reform process has failed to improve the representation of sub-Saharan Africa in the IMF and that no action has been taken to address the steady erosion of the voting share of this region during the previous round of governance (Executive Board) reforms,” explained the ministry. - SAnews.gov.za