G20 St. Petersburg Summit Outcomes and Future Tasks

Abstract

The 8th G20 Leaders' Summit was held in St. Petersburg, Russia on September 5-6, 2013. At this year’s summit, along with the member countries, 6 invitees (Spain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Senegal, Singapore) and heads of 7 international organizations (UN, World Bank, IMF, FSB, OECD, WTO, ILO) were invited to participate in the premier forum. According to its troika system, Mexico (2012 chair), Russia (2013 chair), and Australia (2014 chair) have worked closely to draw up the agendas and produced the leader's declaration for this year's summit.

Substantial improvements have been made within the summit structure; the 'Financial Track' has been delegated to deal with the financial and fiscal challenges that grew with expanding agendas, which were becoming a burden for Sherpas. For the main agendas, the forum proposed the action plan (for each country) and will be monitoring each agenda via the accountability report. A detailed joint reports have been drafted by experts and working groups to settle the concern of summit being left as a mere 'talk shop'.

The main achievements entail the coop-eration between G20 countries for job creation, fiscal consolidation, and tax justice. G20 Leaders stress the importance of bolstering G20's functions with the aim of creating strong, inclusive growth and jobs, as well as securing the sustainability of public finances.

The G20 St. Petersburg Summit was held in the midst of a gloomy world economic climate; where ameliorating the unemployment, especially youth unemployment, sat as the universal priority. Acknowledging this; the chair country, Russia, emphasized on; 'growth and job creation', and put together the Leader's Declaration, composed of 114 sections, and 11 annex documents with detailed contents of agreement for each agenda.

To commemorate the 5th anniversary of the G20 Leaders' Summit, 'G20 5th Anniversary Vision Statement' was also announced. During which, leaders concurred that the collaborate work of G20 members was vital in recovering the world economy from the financial crisis in 2008. The statement also highlights the importance of inclusive growth, orderly global economy, market openness, and other factors which contributed to strong, sustainable, and balanced growth.