India's G20 Presidency: A Mega Recap
India managed to get 100% consensus on #DelhiDeclaration at #G20Summit. BQ Prime's Janani Janarthanan & Rishabh Bhatnagar take us through other key highlights in this special show. #BQLive
Transcript
00:00 The
00:20 2023 G20 New Delhi Summit will be earmarked as a moment of great diplomatic importance.
00:27 It achieved a joint communique or a 100% consensus declaration with all the leaders, despite
00:33 a war being ravaged across the Black Sea in Ukraine.
00:37 The world is battling inflation, a cost of living crisis in many parts continues to loom,
00:42 and the world is also dealing with tighter monetary conditions.
00:45 "With the hard work of our teams and with the support of all of you, the New Delhi G20
00:58 Leaders' Summit Declaration has been signed.
01:02 I propose that this Leaders' Declaration should also be adopted."
01:12 Any conversation about the New Delhi Summit must begin at the declaration.
01:16 And the declaration was achieved on day one itself, a 100% consensus declaration with
01:21 no footnotes, no disagreements from any of the countries, despite the presidential absences
01:25 of two countries.
01:27 And in these 83 parallels that came about in this declaration, we saw eight of them
01:31 being outlined towards the geopolitical tensions that are in Ukraine.
01:35 It was about managing the food insecurity that is emerging from that, the energy insecurity
01:40 emerging from that.
01:42 And you know, notably, I found that it differs from its predecessor, the Bali Declaration,
01:46 on one count, being the fact that none of the G7 countries nor its allies have opposed,
01:52 in strong words, or exacted any sort of condemnation against Russia, which we find in the Bali
01:57 Declaration.
01:58 In fact, it asks for unequivocal and almost an immediate withdrawal from the territory
02:03 of Ukraine in the Bali Declaration.
02:05 We don't find that here.
02:06 In fact, there is no mention of Russia too, in that particular eight parallel, except
02:10 on the part of food and energy insecurity.
02:12 So these were some things that stood out immediately for us and of course, for all the international
02:17 media.
02:18 The New Delhi Leaders Declaration has 83 parallels in all.
02:24 All 83 parallels have 100% consensus across all countries.
02:31 All countries have unanimously supported the New Delhi Leaders Declaration.
02:36 This is one declaration without a single footnote and without any chair's summary.
02:42 This is a complete statement with 100% unanimity.
02:47 Jhanvi, the second takeaway that one must bear mention of is the inclusion of the African
02:53 Union, right?
02:54 That's a massive, massive step that India has taken again, to cement its voice as the
03:00 leader of the Global South as well.
03:02 Again, the G20, we could see G20 going from G20 to G21 as well.
03:08 Right.
03:09 You know, before this, it was just South Africa, part of the African continent that was in
03:13 the G20.
03:14 Now with the African Union, which is a rotating, you know, council presidency, much like the
03:19 Europe, it gets a permanent status, but it will be the other bloc nation, a 55 member
03:24 bloc nation that will be a part of this.
03:27 So, this is a massive step that India has taken.
03:34 (Applause)
04:01 You know, another thing that emerged, which is of a lot of importance is the India, Middle
04:18 East and the Europe mega economic corridor.
04:21 I know it's quite a mouthful, that terminology in and of itself, but what it means to show
04:25 is about how there is a new economic corridor, a new trade route that is coming into play.
04:32 This has been linked to whether it's a competition to the One Belt, One Road initiative of China
04:37 and what it tries to achieve.
04:38 But what we know as of now is the member countries that are in this alliance.
04:41 We have India, we have Saudi Arabia, the United States, United Arab Emirates, United States
04:46 also.
04:47 European countries, we have Germany, Italy, France.
04:51 We also have the European Union, who's part of this, this economic bloc.
04:55 (Speaking in Hindi)
05:19 Like you said, it is being sort of built as a counter to China's One Belt, One Road initiative.
05:25 It also had similar objectives, but in the words of Turkish President Erdogan, and I
05:31 quote, this is what he said, that this is like a continuation of the historic Silk Road,
05:36 so which is a very important statement that he made.
05:40 This is a corridor in which our Prime Minister's vision of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas is very
05:45 clearly ingrained right from the beginning, right from the conception of this project.
05:52 So each country can look at its own needs and basis those needs and requirements, the
05:58 project can be then designed.
06:01 Secondly, because this project is highly bankable, many multilateral institutions are willing
06:08 to fund it, sovereign funds are willing to participate in it, private equity is willing
06:13 to be a part of it.
06:15 The transportation itself will bring so much revenue to this corridor, that it will be
06:21 able to pay on its own without getting the host country into a debt trap.
06:26 I think another major announcement that came from the summit was that of the Global Biofuel
06:30 Alliance.
06:32 India actually urged all these three-pointy nations to join the initiative and also the
06:38 major plea was to take ethanol blending with petrol globally to about 20%.
06:45 So, you know, these major changes, now we've listed out four here, but what it does is
06:50 build a larger narrative of the kind of topics that India wanted to bring about as the Global
06:54 South.
06:55 And I think this, the establishment of the Global Biofuel Alliance, and the Prime Minister
07:00 has only urged and we've seen only about 19 countries and 12 other organizations being
07:05 a part of it, accepting it so far, and we can only hope this clarion call will only
07:10 grow louder from here.
07:11 Let's talk about the key bilateral takeaways now.
07:14 Though G20 is a multilateral forum, it also bears the inadvertent advantage of there being
07:19 a lot of bilateral meetings that can happen on the sidelines of the summit.
07:23 On day zero prior to the formal commencement of the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
07:27 held bilateral meetings with the US President Joe Biden, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh
07:32 Haseena and Mauritius Prime Minister Praveen Jagnath.
07:36 On Saturday, that was day one, he met UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister
07:42 Giorgio Meloni.
07:43 With Sunak, he accepted another offer for a detailed bilateral meeting and also expressed
07:49 interest to sort of fast track the free trade agreement with the UK.
07:54 That's right, that was day one, but day two, it began at Rajgad, there was a change in
07:57 venue, after which there were also other bilateral meetings, there was one session of the summit
08:01 but they were bilaterals with French President Emmanuel Macron.
08:05 There was a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Schultz and much later in the day on
08:10 the sidelines of the meetings with South Korean President Yun Suk-hyen, Turkey's President
08:14 Erdogan, who addressed the media too later that day, African Union President, the newest
08:19 inductee into the G20 leaders table actually, Azali Osmani, alongside the European Union
08:25 heads of course.
08:26 So this was pretty much the meetings that happened on day two.
08:29 Being the host country comes with a host of advantages, showcasing one's advantages in
08:36 terms of the priorities for digital infrastructure, be it for financial inclusion or showcasing
08:42 India's culture and we saw all of that on display at the G20 too.
08:46 The frictionless credit basically tries to remove the friction between the lenders and
08:52 information providers.
08:53 So therefore it obviates the need of one-to-one, multiple integration with multiple information
08:59 providers.
09:00 We have showcased three things.
09:02 One is the UPI One World, one is RUPEE on the go and one is the BBPS because these have
09:09 some unique features which are not otherwise easily available.
09:13 So that is what we are showcasing and the experience so far has been very, very positive.
09:18 A lot of enthusiasm at the very highest level has been shown and that is obvious from the
09:26 footfall that we have had and especially the UPI experience that we want the delegates
09:32 to have by onboarding them onto the UPI One World that we expect and hope will translate
09:43 into more and more countries showing interest in having a collaboration with our UPI stack.
09:50 And on the first day after the joint consensus declaration was announced, we also saw that
09:56 the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman highlighted the finance priorities.
09:59 Now the G20 emerged as an economic grouping so their finance priorities are of much importance
10:04 such as the strengthening of multilateral development banks.
10:08 Now a call for bigger, better, stronger MDBs was heard loud and clear from this particular
10:13 G20.
10:14 A debt resolution framework for some of the debt distressed countries was also taken up.
10:20 In fact, we found four countries getting that.
10:22 Sri Lanka also which is not a low income country, middle income country but that also got some
10:28 sort of a debt relief framework that all these countries have agreed upon.
10:32 You know there's also an agreement that now in the next meeting that is expected to happen
10:37 in October which will be the last finance ministers and central bank governors meeting,
10:42 these topics especially the MDBs independent expert group review, their final report or
10:49 the crypto framework.
10:50 This has been a much debated topic in fact, whether in fact the cryptocurrency regulation
10:54 would come out.
10:55 Now we know a framework has come out which means countries can take positions of either
10:59 regulating it or and which amount of regulation that they want to choose is something in their
11:06 purview.
11:07 This is in the Marrakech meeting and this is something we'll have to watch out for.
11:12 In terms of other very very important outcomes that have come even in the joint declaration
11:19 I think one of the key highlights is the furtherance of digital public infrastructure.
11:24 For the first time ever a common definition and framework has been agreed upon by G20
11:30 nations and so I mean it sort of catapulted the phrase digital public infrastructure into
11:36 popularity as well on a scale of the summit.
11:41 The second very important thing in the DPI space is that India's plan to build and maintain
11:47 a global repository of all these softwares has sort of been approved by the G20 leaders
11:55 as well.
11:56 So for example, let's take India's UPI and Brazil's equivalent which is PIX.
12:02 So if PIX has a feature that the UPI in India wants to incorporate and if Brazil is voluntarily
12:08 sharing all the software on the global repository, India can very easily sort of accumulate that
12:16 feature into the UPI as well.
12:19 So what that helps is, what that does is that it helps all these sort of global major economies
12:25 trust digital public infrastructure for the welfare of their own populations.
12:31 The third, the key major takeaway is the formation of the One Future Alliance.
12:35 So the One Future Alliance is again a lot of like-minded countries coming together and
12:40 planning how they can use digital public infrastructure for the welfare of these millions and crores
12:46 of people that are there.
12:47 It is so necessary to have better, bigger and more effective MDBs because the developmental
12:53 demands from all across the globe is so high, these institutions will have to be better
12:59 and bigger.
13:00 This is also going to contribute to enhancing representation and voice of developing countries
13:06 in the decision making.
13:08 The second under the MDBs, strengthening of MDBs is the G20 Independent Expert Group on
13:15 Strengthening MDBs and this was established and it has submitted its volume one.
13:23 The first report, their report consists of two volumes.
13:26 The first volume has already been submitted.
13:29 The report recommends a triple agenda that dovetails with the call for the bigger, better
13:37 and more effective MDBs.
13:40 The third point in strengthening MDBs is the agreement to collectively work towards boosting
13:46 World Bank's financing capacity.
13:50 Here the options will be explored that will deliver a powerful boost to the IBRD headroom
13:57 to support low-income and middle-income countries.
14:01 And the fourth, endorsement for the G20 roadmap for implementation of the recommendations
14:09 of an independent panel on capital adequacy framework of the MDBs.
14:16 So the CAF recommendations are focused on enabling MDBs to use the existing resources
14:24 effectively, the roadmap estimates, this is going to be of interest for the media, the
14:31 roadmap estimates that implementation of the CAF and the measures thereby will potentially
14:38 yield additional lending headroom of approximately 200 billion US dollars over the next decade.
14:47 The global push for clearer policies on crypto assets has gained momentum under the Indian
14:54 presidency and a global consensus is emerging on the same.
15:00 The presidency will support the IMF and the FSB and FSB is also setting the contours of
15:09 the regulatory framework for a globally coordinated approach to crypto assets.
15:16 Since the summit drew to a close, it was topped off by a visit by Prime Minister Narendra
15:20 Modi to the International Media Centre.
15:23 He came there directly after a string of bilateral meetings with the heads of Nigeria, Brazil
15:28 and the Netherlands.
15:29 While he didn't make any comments or take questions, the hall was buzzing as the Prime
15:34 Minister took in the laurels of a successful joint declaration.
15:38 The G20 presidency next goes to another emerging economy, Brazil.
15:43 That's right, after that we have South Africa in 2025, followed by the United States, it
15:48 goes back to the United States in 2026.
15:51 Now Pragati Mehtaan's recent glow up one could say, the Bharat Mandapam will go down
15:56 in history for a couple of reasons.
15:59 One being for the fact that it has hosted so many world leaders in India.
16:04 It walked the diplomatic tightrope on whether there will be a joint declaration or not.
16:09 It also saw the inclusion of the African bloc or the African Union of 55 member nations.
16:14 So these are all points of much importance.
16:17 And you know, like you said, while the Prime Minister took what one could call a victory
16:21 lap at the International Media Centre, it also showed the gravitas with which this summit
16:27 was conducted in India.
16:29 The decibel of the audience, the sense of urgency in the air also reflects the theme
16:35 of what was in G20 at this time, one earth, one family, one future.
16:39 So it all ties down together really quite well actually.
16:43 That's all we have for you.
16:44 Stay tuned to BQ Prime as we bring you more updates on international policy and finance.
16:50 Thank you.
17:09 (Applause.)
17:16 (END)
17:21 This is an uncorrected transcript.
17:34 For more information visit www.bq.org/news/correctedtranscript