G20 Summit: Policy Next - Indian Presidency to leave a mark on the event

It has been a watershed year for India. The country has been a global voice, and its G20 Presidency has put it in a better position to influence the agenda before the world's most powerful countries. And it has looked to make the most of this opportunity by tabling issues that are key priorities for the not-so-powerful nations.

Resolving the debt problem of vulnerable countries has been a leading concern. Given the variety of their creditors, it has been difficult to get them all on the same table and thrash out a quick solution. The advanced, developing, and poor countries have also been at a crossroads when it comes to combatting climate change and making the transition to green energy. This requires money, and while India has been able to fund its own initiatives, others are not so fortunate. Time is of the essence, as 2023 has shown, with extreme climate events becoming more and more regular.

Whenever funding on an international scale is involved, institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund must be part of the conversation. India has called for wide-ranging reforms to these multilateral development banks (MDBs) to ensure they become more efficient and ready to meet the demands of a changing world.

Under the finance track of the G20, the finance ministers and central bank governors — led by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das — constituted an expert group jointly chaired by noted economist Professor Larry Summers and chairman of the 15th Finance Commission, NK Singh, to recommend MDB reforms. The Summers-Singh group has already submitted the first volume of its report.

With New Delhi set to host the G20 Leaders' Summit on September 9-10, Moneycontrol is bringing together key stakeholders and experts on August 25 to examine the Indian Presidency and the various issues it has put forward in the forum. Headlining the latest edition of Moneycontrol's Policy Next is Amitabh Kant, the G20 Sherpa, who will deliver the keynote address. Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, will close proceedings, with several panel discussions over the course of the day.

Crypto and payments

India hasn't only focused on the Global South, comprising the poorer countries of eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The collapse of crypto firm FTX in late 2022, just before India assumed the G20 Presidency, cast a dark shadow over the entire world and served as another reminder of the risks to the traditional financial sector and the public from a new-age technology. While the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been vocal in its opposition to crypto for nearly 10 years now, the Indian government has recognised crypto's cross-border nature and looked to drive a global consensus so that loopholes and jurisdictional matters don't result in local laws being bypassed.

Also Read: How India's crypto fight could bear fruit at G20 Leaders' Summit

If regulating crypto is about reducing risk, there are gains to be made from other technology in the payments space. The Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, may be old news for us Indians, but the world is only now beginning to understand its huge potential. Government officials and private players from across the world have been raving about UPI and India's digital payments infrastructure, and multiple agreements have been signed to link the UPI with other countries' fast-payments systems — at least with countries which have one.

Just to illustrate how far ahead India is in the digital payments space, it was only on July 20 that the US Federal Reserve announced the launch of FedNow, its new system for instant payments. To be fair, even Indian officials didn't truly know how successful and important UPI would become.

"When it (UPI) was launched in 2016, nobody could have imagined where UPI transactions would reach — 300 million transactions per day. It is unbelievable. But it has happened. And now UPI is at the forefront of international efforts for developing fast payments systems," RBI Governor Das said in Gandhinagar last month.

No communique

If there has been a glaring miss for the Indian Presidency, it is the absence of an official joint statement, or communique. The lack of consensus on the language to characterise the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and its impact on the global economy — directly as well as through economic sanctions imposed on Russia — means India has so far been forced to release a Chair's Summary and Outcome Document.

Also Read: India releases Chair Summary, joint statement unlikely before G20 Leaders' Summit

But that should not detract from the agreement that is there on "95 percent plus" issues.

RBI Governor Das is known to quote several renowned figures from history in his speeches. But when it comes to summing up how India's G20 Presidency has been received by other nations, one must turn to Das, who is a veteran of these negotiations.

"I have been participating in G20 meetings from 2015, first, when I was in the finance ministry, then as the G20 Sherpa, and thereafter as the Governor. The level of engagement, involvement, enthusiasm, and active participation of member countries and their appreciation about the kind of steering that the Indian Presidency is providing to the entire G20 exercise — in my mind, if I can use the word 'unprecedented', I will not be wrong," Das said on July 18.

Considering that Das is not prone to hyperbole — if anything, he is usually cautious in his assessment — his comments speak volumes about what India has managed to achieve. It may not finally be able to check every box on its agenda, but global deliberations are notoriously slow due to divergent interests, and beginning a conversation on touchy issues and taking them a step or two forward inside of a year is rather commendable.