The third meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors of the G20 countries has concluded in India, with members issuing a ‘chair's summary’ instead of a communique as they could not find a “common language on the Russia-Ukraine war,” Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the media on Tuesday.
“Our position since February was that we derive the statement from Bali [leaders’ declaration] and the language given at the Bali summit, we don’t have the mandate to change that. So it must be left to the leaders during the summit in September to take a call on that,” Sitharaman said.
She also referred to a previous meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in February this year in Bengaluru, where a similar approach to the final communique was taken. The document included a clause from the Bali declaration, adopted last year during the G20 leaders’ summit in Indonesia. It held that while most countries condemned Russia’s actions in Ukraine, there were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.
The summary published on Tuesday evening repeated that clause, noting that China and Russia objected to paragraphs referring to the conflict. China stated that the G20 finance meeting was not the right forum to discuss geopolitical issues, while Russia distanced itself from the document because of references to Ukraine in several paragraphs.
The G20 finance chiefs’ meeting was held on July 17-18 in Gandhinagar, the capital of India’s western state of Gujarat. The country holds the rotating presidency of the multilateral forum. Ahead of the leaders’ summit in September, New Delhi is trying to forge a consensus on reforms for multilateral banks, regulation of volatile cryptocurrencies and the debt crisis in poor nations.
In her opening remarks, the Indian finance minister noted that the two-day meeting had been fruitful, even though the discussions this time “went for long hours,” she said. The meetings were organized on five themes, covering the global economy, global health, sustainable finance and infrastructure, international finance architecture, international taxation and the finance sector and financial inclusion. “The Indian presidency received wide support on all the agenda items,” Sittharaman said, thanking the G20 partners for providing valuable input to strengthen the agenda.
Earlier last week, India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant reiterated that the Ukraine conflict did not figure on New Delhi’s list of priorities for outcomes from its presidency. Speaking on the sidelines of the third meeting of the G20 Sherpas in Hampi, a historic temple town in Karnataka state, he said India was focused on finalizing the language of the ‘Leader’s Declaration’ relating to key economic and development issues, and the “contentious” aspects could be taken up at a later date.
On June 16, Kant said “we live in the ‘era of diplomacy and dialogue’ and we must strive to achieve the outcomes that the Presidency has prioritized.” The last sherpa meeting, which is scheduled in early September ahead of the leaders’ summit, will be a final attempt to submit compromise formulas to the member states and come to a consensus on a joint statement. If that exercise fails, India would be left with no option but to issue a 'Chairman’s Outcome Statement', Kant explained.
The G20 includes the world’s 19 largest economies, with the European Union as the 20th member. Last month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote to all the G20 leaders, proposing that the African Union – consisting of 54 African countries – be made a full member at the September meeting.