03 April, 2009

At a glance: G20 agreement

At a glance: G20 agreement

G20 leaders at start of summit

G20 world leaders have revealed their communiqué to tackle the global economic crisis. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the $1.1 trillion deal as he closed the G20 summit. Here is a summary of the key points:

FINANCIAL REGULATION
  • A new Financial Stability Board, with a strengthened mandate, will replace the Financial Stability Forum
  • Financial regulation and oversight will be extended to all financial institutions, instruments and markets
  • This includes bringing hedge funds within the global regulatory net for the first time
  • Members are committed to implementing tough new rules on pay and bonuses at a global level
  • International accounting standards will be set
  • Credit rating agencies will be regulated in order to remove their conflicts of interest
  • A common approach to cleaning up banks' toxic assets has been agreed

TAX HAVENS
  • There will be sanctions against tax havens that do not transfer information on request
  • The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information

IMF
  • Resources available to the International Monetary Fund will be trebled to $750bn
  • This includes a new overdraft facility, or special drawing rights allocation, of $250bn
  • Additional resources of $6bn from agreed IMF gold sales will be made available for lending to the poorest countries
  • The G20 also supports increased lending to the world's poorest countries of at least $100bn by the multilateral development banks

GLOBAL TRADE
  • There will be a commitment of $250bn of support for trade finance made over the next two years
  • This will be made available through export credit and investment agencies, as well as through multilateral development banks
  • National regulators will be asked to make use of available flexibility in capital requirements for trade finance

PROTECTIONISM
  • The G20 has pledged to resist protectionism
  • There will be a commitment to naming and shaming countries that breach free trade rules
  • The G20 will notify the World Trade Organization (WTO) of any measures that constrain worldwide capital flows
  • The G20 has called on the WTO to monitor and report publicly on these undertakings on a quarterly basis

FISCAL STIMULUS
  • Although there is no new fiscal stimulus, Gordon Brown said G20 countries are already implementing "the biggest macroeconomic stimulus the world has ever seen" - an injection of $5tn by the end of next year

source:BBC

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