G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs yesterday opened talks on debt restructuring deals, multilateral bank reform and finance to tackle climate change, as they aim to bolster a sagging global economy.
Indian Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman, chair and host of the summit in Gandhinagar, began by telling finance leaders of “the responsibility we have ... to steer the global economy towards strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth.”
Key on the two-day agenda would be “facilitating consensus to intractable issues associated with rising indebtedness,” Sitharaman said earlier in the day, speaking to reporters alongside US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.
Photo: AFP
Talks would also focus on “critical global issues such as strengthening the multilateral development banks and taking coordinated climate action,” Sitharaman added.
“The world is looking to the G20 to make progress on key challenges like climate change and pandemics as part of our work to strengthen the global economy,” Yellen said.
She also cited work to tackle debt distress among the world’s poorest countries, pointing to debt restructuring progress in Zambia, which she had discussed when visiting Beijing this month.
China, the world’s second-largest economy and a major lender to several stressed, low-income countries in Asia and Africa, has so far resisted a common multilateral understanding on the issue, officials said.
Yellen on Sunday said that the Zambia deal had taken “too long to negotiate,” adding that she hoped debt treatments for Ghana and Sri Lanka could be “finalized quickly.”
“We should apply the common principles we agreed to in Zambia’s case in other cases, rather than starting at zero every time,” Yellen said. “And we must go faster.”
More than half of all low-income countries are near or in debt distress, double the case in 2015, she added.
A top official from G20 chair India said there had been a “not so encouraging response” from Beijing on shared debt understanding.
The G20 members would also discuss multilateral development banks’ reform, cryptocurrency regulations, and making access to financing to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change easier.
“In the Global North, climate change means emissions reductions,” World Bank president Ajay Banga wrote in an op-ed ahead of the meeting.
“But in the Global South, it is a matter of survival, because hurricanes are stronger, heat-resistant seeds are in short supply, drought is destroying farms and towns, and floods are washing away decades of progress,” he wrote.
A newly agreed first step on a fairer distribution of tax revenues from multinational firms reached by 138 countries last week is also set to be delivered.
Multinationals, especially tech firms, are able to shift profits easily to countries with low tax rates even though they carry out only a small part of their activities there.
There is also concern that developed G7 member countries’ focus on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might derail a final consensus agreement, although Yellen has said she would “push back” on criticism that there was a trade-off between aid to Kyiv and developing nations.
Japanese Minister of Finance Shunichi Suzuki on Sunday “reconfirmed the G7’s unshakeable support” to Ukraine, adding that Moscow should also “pay long-term reconstruction costs.”
Any discussion on Ukraine is awkward for India, which has not condemned Russia’s invasion, but is also part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue alongside Australia, the US and Japan.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS