G20-2015 Turkey

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Prospects for the
G20 at Antalya
As G20 leaders gather in Turkey, their foundational mission
of making globalisation work for all will be underlined by an
agenda focused on inclusiveness and the associated challenges,
says John Kirton, Co-director, G20 Research Group
John Kirton is Co-director of the
G20 Research Group, the BRICS
Research Group and the Global
Health Diplomacy Program, as well
as Director of the G7 Research
Group, all based at Trinity College at
the Munk School of Global Affairs,
University of Toronto, where he is
a Professor of Political Science.
He is also a Non-resident Senior
Fellow at the Chongyang Institute
for Financial Studies at Renmin
University of China, author of
G20 Governance for a Globalized
World and co-author of The Global
Governance of Climate Change: G7,
G20 and UN Leadership.
@jjkirton
www.g20.utoronto.ca
The G20’s 10th summit, taking
place in Antalya, Turkey, on
15-16 November 2015 promises
to be a significant success
across all its priorities of inclusiveness,
investment and implementation. Led by
summit co-founder and long-time veteran,
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
it will advance its central goal of inclusive
growth by promising to increase youth
unemployment, support small and mediumsized
enterprises (SMEs) and enhance the
place of women. It will expand the G20’s
agenda to include the immediate crises of
Syrian refugees and terrorism. G20 leaders
will promise to increase their countries’
investment and implementation monitoring
to reach their goal of raising economic
growth at least 2% above the initially
estimated trajectory by 2018. And they will
further institutionalise the G20, notably
by introducing a new ministerial forum
for energy, the World SME Forum and the
Women 20 (W20) engagement group.
Compensating for slow growth
Generating strong, sustainable, balanced
and now inclusive growth will be at the
core of the leaders’ agenda. This is due to
the slowdown in global economic growth
and trade, the recession in Russia and
Brazil, and the still sluggish recovery in
the advanced G7 countries. Investment, especially
for infrastructure, will be the first instrument used.
Leaders are poised to promise additional measures to
compensate for the steady decline in estimated growth
and for their incomplete implementation of the 1,000
measures they promised last year under their Brisbane
Action Plan (BAP) to lift G20 growth by at least 2%.
Other efforts to boost growth will arise elsewhere
on the G20’s traditional agenda. Fiscal sustainability,
spillover sensitive monetary policy and market-oriented
exchange rates will be endorsed, as the world awaits
the long-anticipated rise in the US Federal Reserve’s
policy interest rates and worries about the economic
and financial health and policy of China. Stronger, more
harmonised financial regulation and supervision will
be approved, perhaps now with the recognition that
climate change threatens the global financial stability
that the G20 was created to preserve. A call for reform
of international financial institutions will be again
made. Leaders will endorse trade liberalisation through
major plurilateral and regional agreements, such as the
recently negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership, and call
for them to be a compatible building block for the long
overdue completion of the multilateral Doha round at the
World Trade Organization (WTO). To improve domestic
resource mobilisation, anti-corruption and economic
efficiency and fairness, leaders will adopt the next
stage of the work of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) on base erosion and
profit shifting, designed to ensure that all firms pay their
taxes where their production and profits actually arise.
Inclusiveness will see the most innovation and thus
serve as Antalya’s centrepiece achievement. Inclusion
will be identified as an important cause of economic
growth, rather than a constraint. Leaders will seek to
have the implementation of their BAP commitments
42 G20 Turkey: The Antalya Summit November 2015 g7g20.com