G20 Summit 2023 Agenda To Key Deliverables: Here's What To Expect
The event will conclude with India passing the G20 baton to Brazil—the host for the next summit in 2024.
The G20 Summit 2023 under India's presidency is set to take place this weekend.
India's legacy to the group of 20 nations could be on issues such as cryptocurrency regulation, multilateral development bank reform, furthering digital public infrastructure, climate financing, formulating common debt relief frameworks for distressed countries, and improving the lines of global value chains.
Although the language around the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the subsequent global food and energy insecurity is likely to impact the joint communiqué, the summit in New Delhi is expected to yield a chair summary similar to the G20 Bali Summit in 2022.
The lack of consensus on certain topics is highlighted by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping from the list of leaders due to visit New Delhi this weekend.
The event will conclude with India passing the G20 baton to Brazil—the host for the next summit in 2024.
The G20 is primarily an economic grouping, conceptualised to include the voices of key advanced and emerging market economies. This puts much focus on India's financial priorities and the progress it chooses to showcase as the host country.
As the leading nations meet while the Russia-Ukraine crisis continues, concerns about global economic recovery, supply chain breakdown, inflation management, and monetary tightening have impacted much of the discourse, with a difference of opinion seen among various countries.
India's Finance Track
Some of the key issues laid out by the Indian delegation include digital public architecture, virtual digital assets, climate financing for developing nations, reforming multilateral development banks, improving financing methods for urban infrastructure, the debt vulnerabilities of distressed low and middle-income countries, and international taxation.
India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while speaking in Gandhinagar at the end of the third Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, said that delegations have shown interest in the agenda laid out by India, as evidenced by the long hours of the finance deputies' meeting.
The Indian presidency received wide support on all agenda items ... a big thanks for all the G20 members for supporting all our agenda items and offering constructive inputs in strengthening the agenda and infusing more content in the agenda.Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at the third FMCBG press conference
India's agenda has seen significant progress among the 27 deliverables of the finance track, according to a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
An IMF-FSB synthesis paper, released to the public on Sept. 7, stated that its expected outcome is to have test estimates of flows and stocks of crypto-assets used as means of payment broken down according to type, sector, and counterpart country by Q4 2025 (October–December 2025).
The paper, which has been circulated among the G20 delegations, and the subsequent regulation that is anticipated come on the heels of FTX's fall and the crypto boom of recent times.
India's presidency, however, will officially end with the fourth and final FMCBG meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, where the expert group report on MDB reform and extending their lending capabilities will be discussed.
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A 'Multilateral Development Banks Capital Adequacy Frameworks'—developed under the aegis of the G20—proposed that an additional lending capacity of $200 billion could be made available by MDBs over the next 10 years.
Among other notable outcomes, the Trade Minister's meeting in August under the authority of Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal agreed upon establishing a 'Jaipur Call for Action'. This includes creating a database of information aimed at aiding MSMEs. The trade and investment group also decided on mapping out global value chains and setting down principles for digitising international trade.
In terms of the Sherpa Track, India's diplomatic contribution to the G20 grouping, there could be inclusion of the African Union—a grouping of 55 nations—as a member of the G20, subject to the leaders signing off on it.
Picking up from the last drafting session of the leaders' declaration in Hampi in July, the Sherpas and heads of delegations covered six priorities. It included sustainable development goals, green development, MDB reforms, digital public infrastructure, and gender equality, drawing on the outcomes from the various working groups.
What Businesses Want
The Business 20, or B20, is a grouping under the G20 that brings together international business doyens and their policy recommendations to the heads of state.
Chaired by Tata Sons' N Chandrashekaran, the B20 communiqué featured recommendations such as:
Improving service trade and enhancing technology in trade
The rollout of digital public infrastructure to boost financial inclusion and healthcare access
Accelerate the net-zero transition through a harmonised international carbon market.
Harmonising cybersecurity standards and data privacy regulations
Allow for cross-border R&D and technology transfer of best practices.
A universal labour information management system.
Incorporate tech-driven frameworks in an AI age.
Integrate Africa into the global economy.
The B20 also proposed that the leaders establish a few institutional mechanisms.
These include a B20 Global Institute to pursue the recommendations made, financing decarbonisation, putting in place a Global SDG Acceleration Fund—a credit enhancement fund to draw in private capital for more public resources and achieving 2030 targets—and a compendium of best practices on innovation projects to serve as a knowledge repository.
