Finance officials from leading advanced and emerging countries began three days of talks Thursday on reshaping the global economic system to prevent debilitating crises like the one that took the world to the brink of a depression in 2008. The European sovereign debt crisis, which has triggered slides in global financial markets and the euro, is overshadowing longer term efforts to reform banking regulation and set up financial safety nets for countries emerging from crisis.
Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that the continent's debt woes were worrisome and have implications beyond the region. "If it affects the recovery of Europe as a whole, then it will affect the world recovery," Mukherjee told reporters. The issue was certain to be discussed at the meetings, he said.
Reinforcing fears that consumers are fretting about the debt crisis afflicting the region, retail sales in the 16 countries that use the single currency fell by 1.2 percent in April from March, the EU's statistics office said Thursday.
The Group of 20 was founded in 1999 and shot into the limelight in late 2008 as the key international forum for managing the global financial system as countries grappled with the crisis brought on by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.
The gathering brings together rich countries like the United States, Japan and Germany, emerging powers like China and developing economies Indonesia and South Africa, who have demanded and gained more say in the wake of the crisis.
Group of 20 deputy finance ministers and central bank governors started meeting Thursday to prepare a draft communique that their bosses will discuss Friday and Saturday, said Kim Young-min, a spokesman for South Korea's Ministry of Strategy and Finance.