ST, ANDREWS, Scotland: G20 finance ministers met Friday to shore up the recovery from the global financial crisis and discuss funding for a still uncertain agreement on climate change. The ministers from the world’s 20 most powerful and fastest emerging economies held the third in a series of meetings this year which led to a $1 trillion fiscal stimulus package to tackle the recession.
Over two days in the picturesque Scottish coastal town of St. Andrews, they are seeking to flesh out agreements made at a leaders’ summit in Pittsburgh in September.
Now that the United States, Japan, Germany and France have emerged from recession after last year’s global financial crisis, the G20’s focus has switched from disaster management to building a secure economic future.
British Finance Minister Alistair Darling said ahead of the meeting that ministers agreed it was too early to withdraw massive economic support packages while the global recovery remained fragile.
“At the G20 [in Pittsburgh]we agreed that it would be a real mistake to withdraw the stimulus packages before their work was done,” Darling said in an interview with European newspapers.
“But at the same time, we also agreed that some measures would be withdrawn at different times. We mustn’t withdraw everything at once.”
Despite the signs of recovery, coordinated action was still required, Darling added, as Britain suffers its longest recession on record.
“If we do not act, there is a risk that we will be confronted by a decade of weak growth and low employment,” he said.
The rockiness in the British economy was underlined when the government said this week it was pumping in an extra 30 billion pounds (33 billion euros, $49 billion) to support Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group.
RBS, which is now 84-percent state-owned, said on Friday that despite massive aid over the past year to prevent it from collapse it made a net quarterly loss of 1.8 billion pounds and expected recovery to be slow.
The St. Andrews meeting will work out details of the so-called global framework for growth agreed in Pittsburgh, designed to prevent a repetition of last year’s crisis which has cost millions of jobs worldwide.
Meanwhile, France says it wants to see genuine signs of progress on curbs on bankers’ bonuses after the leaders agreed in Pittsburgh to move towards a system of spreading them over a longer period with the possibility of clawing back the payments if they under-perform. – AFP
Listen to the Article 
Printable Version 
Send to a friend 