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Thursday, July 10, 2025

G20 special representative visits T&T

by

20140729

The 2014 Glob­al Twen­ty agen­da (G20), will fo­cus on pro­mot­ing stronger eco­nom­ic growth as well as in­creas­ing the abil­i­ty of the glob­al econ­o­my to with­stand fu­ture shocks.

This is what Aus­tralia's G20 spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Daniel Slop­er, told some of this coun­try's and the re­gion's gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, busi­ness­men and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, when he met with them on Mon­day at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain. The meet­ing was host­ed by the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (IIR), UWI St Au­gus­tine.

"Two main ar­eas for this year's work is to pro­mote stronger eco­nom­ic growth and em­ploy­ment out­comes and the oth­er is to make the glob­al econ­o­my more re­silient to deal with fu­ture shocks," said Slop­er.

He said this fo­cus came out of de­ci­sions made by last year's lead­ers in St Pe­ters­burg, Rus­sia.

"Rus­sia last year host­ed the sum­mit and they dic­tate what we are do­ing this year in tak­ing our work for­ward," he said.

Aus­tralia is the 2014 chair of the G20, the pre­miere fo­rum for in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic co-op­er­a­tion and de­ci­sion-mak­ing, with rep­re­sen­ta­tion from 19 coun­tries plus the Eu­ro­pean Union. The fo­cus of G20 and its mem­bers is to dis­cuss and find ways to strength­en the glob­al econ­o­my, re­form in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and im­prove fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion.

Be­fore join­ing in a round ta­ble dis­cus­sion with at­ten­dees, Slop­er said the pur­pose of his vis­it to T&T was to have a mean­ing­ful and healthy dis­course with peo­ple out­side of the G20, lis­ten­ing to their con­cerns, is­sues and even crit­i­cisms and rec­om­men­da­tions on the G20 14 agen­da. He said it was man­dat­ed by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment, as the host coun­try, that such is­sues must be dis­cussed with the wider com­mu­ni­ty be­cause what­ev­er goes in­to the 2014 G20 agen­da will in­evitably im­pact all.

"My prime min­is­ter for one, looks to us to de­liv­er con­crete ac­tions by the end of the year. The G20, as he would de­scribe it, is not a fo­rum to have an­oth­er talk fest or in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ing but to ac­tu­al­ly de­liv­er con­crete out­comes," Slop­er said.

This is im­por­tant, he added, be­cause of the growth chal­lenge that still ex­ists af­ter the 2008/9 glob­al melt­down.

"Many coun­tries faced dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances af­ter the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis and many are still strug­gling to make a com­plete come­back," said Slop­er.

He said re­search had shown a steady fluc­tu­a­tion in the growth of the glob­al econ­o­my, most­ly fore­casts show­ing pro­gres­sive down­turns since the glob­al cri­sis. Slop­er said it was on­ly at the start of 2014 that the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) put out a pos­i­tive fore­cast, the first pos­i­tive in two years.

Ac­cord­ing to the IMF, glob­al ac­tiv­i­ty strength­ened dur­ing the sec­ond half of 2013, as pre­dict­ed in the Oc­to­ber 2013 World Eco­nom­ic Out­look (WEO).

Ac­tiv­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to im­prove fur­ther in 2014�15, large­ly on ac­count of re­cov­ery in the ad­vanced economies.

How­ev­er, Slop­er said, just last week the IMF's lat­est WEO up­date showed a de­cline in glob­al ac­tiv­i­ty. In its re­port it stat­ed that glob­al re­cov­ery con­tin­ues but at an un­even pace, and as a re­sult, down­side risks re­mains.

Aus­tralia's host year be­gan on De­cem­ber 1, 2013 and will cul­mi­nate in a lead­ers' sum­mit in Bris­bane on No­vem­ber 15-16.

IMF lat­est re­port as at Ju­ly 2014

?�2 Glob­al growth fore­cast at 3.4 per cent for 2014–0.3 per cent weak­er than April pro­jec­tions–and at four per cent for 2015

�2 Mark­down due to one-off fac­tors and slow­er de­mand in emerg­ing mar­kets

�2 Risks from geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and high­er fi­nan­cial mar­ket volatil­i­ty.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the 2014 G20 agen­da vis­it: www.dfat.gov.au


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