WASHINGTON (MNI) – The following is the text of the Group of 20’s
communique, issued at the conclusion of Friday’s meeting:
Final Communique
1. We, the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, met to
assess progress on the fulfillment of the mandates given to us by our
Leaders and to address ongoing economic and financial challenges and
promote robust growth and job creation.
2. Recent economic developments point to the continuation of a
modest global recovery, supported by some significant policy actions
that have taken place since our last meeting. The tail risks facing the
global economy only months ago have started to recede. However, growth
expectations for 2012 remain moderate, deleveraging is constraining
consumption and investment growth, volatility remains high partly
reflecting financial market pressures in Europe and downside risks still
persist. We remain committed to further reduce these risks. High levels
of public and private indebtedness, the need for structural reforms,
insufficient global rebalancing, and persistent unemployment and
development gaps continue to weigh on medium-term global growth
prospects. In the context of high unemployment and indebtedness in many
countries, supporting growth and job creation, structural reforms,
restoring medium-term fiscal sustainability and promoting global
rebalancing remain at the core of our commitments. In addition,
protecting investment is crucial for the global recovery and, in
accordance to the mandate by our Leaders in Cannes, we reaffirm our
commitment to avoid protectionism. Vigilant of high oil prices, G20
members stand ready to carry out additional actions as needed and
welcome the commitments by producing countries to ensure adequate
supply.
3. We have made progress in implementing the commitments
established in the Cannes Action Plan for growth and jobs, as well as
taken additional actions consistent with our shared objectives for
strong, sustainable and balanced growth. These commitments remain fully
relevant. Complete and timely implementation is critical, though more
needs to be done. We agreed today on the main elements of the
accountability assessment that will be carried out in order to enhance
monitoring of the implementation of our commitments, as mandated by our
Leaders in Cannes. We have also agreed on the main priority areas for
further policy actions that should be reflected in the Los Cabos Action
Plan that will be announced by our Leaders in June, including on fiscal,
financial, structural, monetary and exchange rate, trade and development
policies. We took note of a preliminary report by the international
organizations on how the G20 framework can contribute to job creation,
with the final report being presented at the Los Cabos Summit. These are
important initiatives as increasing growth, infrastructure financing,
employment and social inclusion are at the heart of all our actions.
4. We remain committed to take the necessary actions to secure
global financial stability. We welcome the euro area members’ decisions
in March to strengthen European firewalls as part of broader reform
efforts and the availability of central bank swap lines. Together with
the IMFC we have reached agreement to enhance IMF resources for crisis
prevention and resolution. This is the result of a broad international
cooperative effort that includes a significant number of countries.
There are firm commitments to increase resources made available to the
IMF by over $430 billion in addition to the quota increase under the
2010 Reform. These resources will be available for the whole membership
of the IMF, and not earmarked for any particular region. The resources
would be channeled through temporary bilateral loans and note purchase
agreements to the IMF’s General Resources Account. Should it become
necessary to use these resources, adequate risk mitigation features,
conditionality and burden sharing among official creditors would apply,
as approved by the IMF Board. This effort, together with the national
and regional structural, fiscal, and monetary actions that have been put
in place in the past months, shows the commitment of the international
community to safeguard global financial stability and put the global
economic recovery on a sounder footing.
5. We reaffirmed our commitment to fully implement the 2010
Governance and Quota Reform by the 2012 IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting.
We will continue to contribute towards a comprehensive review of the IMF
quota formula by January 2013 and the completion of the next general
review of quotas by January 2014, fulfilling the commitments made in
Seoul and Cannes. We reaffirm that the distribution of quotas should
better reflect the relative weights of IMF members in the world economy
which have changed substantially in view of strong growth in dynamic
emerging markets and developing countries.
6. We welcome recent initiatives on IMF surveillance, and agree
that the current surveillance framework should be significantly
enhanced. This process should help achieve a better integration of
bilateral and multilateral surveillance, with a focus on global,
domestic and financial stability, including spillovers from countries
policies. This could be achieved through a careful use of Article IV
consultations. We welcome the progress by the IMF in advancing
consideration of an integrated surveillance decision and commit to
support the decision process. We underscore the importance of rigorous
surveillance on exchange rate policies and support a more ample coverage
of surveillance activities, where relevant, including global liquidity,
capital flows, capital account measures, reserve and fiscal, monetary
and financial sector policies that could have an impact on external
stability. We welcome the ongoing work to produce an external sector
report, which would strengthen multilateral analysis and enhance the
transparency of surveillance. We also recognize that political ownership
and traction is critical to effective surveillance, and that the IMFC
has a role in facilitating the active involvement of all IMF members. We
call on the IMF to address issues that constrain effective surveillance
as identified by the IEO.
7. We assessed progress on the implementation of our financial
regulatory reform agenda as outlined in our February 2012 Communiqu in
order to deliver on our commitments looking ahead to the Los Cabos
Leaders’ Summit, and reaffirmed our commitment to common global
standards by pursuing the financial regulatory reform agenda according
to our agreed timetable in an internationally consistent and
non-discriminatory manner. We take note of the work to date by the FSB
and BCBS on the modalities for extending the SIFI framework to domestic
systemically important banks (D-SIBs), and look forward to the
completion of this work by November 2012 and welcome the FSB progress
report on strengthening the oversight and regulation of the shadow
banking system to mitigate potential systemic risk and look forward to
its final recommendations by end-2012. We support the work of the
Working Group on FSB Capacity, Resources and Governance to put the FSB
on an enduring organizational footing while preserving the strong links
with the BIS and look forward to Leaders receiving the Group’s
recommendations in June 2012; the work coordinated by the FSB to provide
safeguards supportive of a global framework for central counterparties
(CCPs) as an important element in achieving the agreed OTC derivatives
reforms, so that authorities can make informed decisions on the
standards and requirements of CCPs to meet by end-2012 their commitment
that all standardized OTC derivatives be centrally cleared in CCPs with
the appropriate safeguards; and the efforts of the IASB and FASB to
achieve convergence to a globally accepted set of high quality
accounting standards and urge them to meet their target of issuing
standards on key convergence projects by mid-2013, at the latest, in
order to achieve a single set of high quality international accounting
standards. We look forward for the completion of the study, coordinated
by the FSB with the IMF and the World Bank, to identify the extent to
which the agreed regulatory reforms may have unintended consequences for
Emerging Markets and Developing Economies. We support the work of the
FSB on the global governance framework for the legal entity identifier
and look forward to its recommendations in June on establishing a global
LEI system. We support work on developing for consultation,
internationally consistent standards on margining for non-centrally
cleared OTC derivatives by June 2012.
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