A senior G20 source said talks on the communique were difficult
Bengaluru:
Finance leaders of the world’s biggest economies were embroiled in differences on Saturday over how to resolve the war in Ukraine and the debt burden of crisis-hit developing countries, participants said.
Representatives said a meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the Group of 20 (G20) hosted by India was likely to end without a joint communique later in the day as there was no consensus on how to describe the conflict in Ukraine. ,
The United States and its allies in the Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers have been adamant in demanding Russia be condemned for the aggression against its neighbor, which has been opposed by the Russian and Chinese delegations, he said.
Russia, a member of the G20 but not the G7, refers to its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation”, and avoids calling it an invasion or a war.
G20 officials told Reuters that India is pressing the meeting to avoid using the word “war” in any communiqué. India, which holds the presidency of the G20 this year, has kept a largely neutral stance on the war, refusing to blame Russia for the invasion, seeking a diplomatic solution and sharply increasing its purchases of Russian oil. .
India and China were among the countries that voted overwhelmingly in a UN poll on Thursday to demand Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine and stop fighting.
Apart from the G7 countries, the G20 bloc also includes countries like Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
A senior G20 source said negotiations on the communiqué were difficult because of Russia and China blocking Western proposals.
The source and several other officials said barring last-minute surprises, a consensus on the communiqué was unlikely and the meeting was likely to end with a statement by the host summarizing the discussions.
“In the absence of consensus, India will have the option of issuing a chair statement,” said an official.
India’s foreign, finance and information ministries did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) met on Saturday with the World Bank, China, India, Saudi Arabia and the G7 on debt restructuring for troubled economies, but there were disagreements among members, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.
“We just finished a session in which it was clear that there is a commitment to bridge differences for the benefit of countries,” Georgieva, who co-chaired the roundtable with Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, told reporters.
The world’s biggest bilateral creditor China and other countries are under pressure to drastically cut loans to struggling developing countries.
In a video address to the G20 meeting on Friday, Chinese Finance Minister Liu Kun reiterated Beijing’s position that the World Bank and other multilateral development banks participate in debt relief by taking haircuts with bilateral creditors.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said ahead of the debt meeting that she would press all bilateral creditors, including China, to participate in meaningful discussions, saying debt treatment for Zambia and financing assurances for Sri Lanka were “most urgent”.
Zambia owes about $6 billion of its total external debt of $17 billion at the end of 2021, according to government data, while Ghana owes China $1.7 billion, according to the International Institute of Finance, a financial services trade association Focuses on emerging markets.
Sri Lanka owes Chinese lenders $7.4 billion – or about a fifth of public external debt – by the end of 2022, calculations by the China Africa Research Initiative think tank show.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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