Nigel Sheinwald

G20 in Pittsburgh

This week, G20 leaders meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for their third summit since the global financial and economic crisis erupted last fall.

This will be a different sort of summit from the meeting in London in April. The world economy is showing the first signs of recovery.  Although it remains fragile, the crisis atmosphere seems to have abated. But, as my Prime Minister has made very clear,  "now is not the time to lose our focus"; nothing can be taken for granted and policymakers must not shirk from the challenges.

So as part of this it will important for leaders to review implementation of the commitments they made in April, including the establishment of the new, more inclusive Financial Stability Board to provide better oversight of financial regulation and supervision and more than $250bn in new bilateral funding for the IMF.

But it will be more than just a stocktaking exercise. President Obama's recent remarks on the forthcoming summit - that "all of us must remember that our work is far from complete" - is a salutary reminder of the profound economic challenges still facing our economies.

There will be much ground to cover but a few key strands are emerging. Can G20 leaders work together towards a new compact for global growth? Can we promote a sustained recovery, including identifying and supporting future sources of growth? How do we best demonstrate that the G20 will continue to take concrete action to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the poorest countries? And how does this process help us to address the acute issue of climate change?

None of these questions is straightforward. But leaders will need to find the answers. I will be in Pittsburgh on Thursday with the Prime Minister; I'll let you know how they all get on.

Posted at 16:27 21 September 2009 by Nigel Sheinwald  |  Comments[2]

Economic recovery and the road to Pittsburgh

This week, I've been back in London for a meeting of the Foreign Office's senior leadership. Whilst there I took the chance to see Baroness Shriti Vadera, Minister for Competitiveness and Enterprise, Jon Cunliffe, the Prime Minister's Adviser for International Economics, who also serves as the G20 Sherpa, and sat in on a meeting between Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Chancellor Alistair Darling and US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who has been visiting Europe.

Unsurprisingly, the global economic recession was the number one item for discussion. Even though the immediate threat to the international financial system seems to have receded, the recession is taking its toll around the world. Crucially, the unemployment rate in most countries continues to rise, exacting a real human cost on millions of households.

We're now almost exactly halfway between the G20 Summit that took place in London in April, and the upcoming meeting scheduled for September in Pittsburgh.

We have made some significant progress on the commitments leaders made in London. Here in the US, the Administration won approval from Congress for a big uplift in the IMF's resources. And proposals for reforming financial regulation have moved forward in the UK, the US and in Europe. You can read the proposals published by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, last week here.

But as well as taking stock of progress since London, leaders in Pittsburgh will want to focus on the future. I think a large part of their discussion will look at what kind of an economic recovery we want to see. After this recession has passed, we want to promote growth that is sustainable and balanced, not prone to speculative bubbles and overly reliant on particular sectors or countries. We need to make sure that recovery takes place in the context of the Copenhagen Climate Conference this December, where countries will seek a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Developing that agenda with our US counterparts will be a top priority for the Foreign Office and the embassy over the next couple of months.

Posted at 03:15 17 July 2009 by Nigel Sheinwald  |  Comments[1]