G8 for security, G20 for economy: PM

ON BOARD AIR INDIA ONE - Returning from the G20 Summit in Toronto, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday said the idea was to make G20 the main global forum on economy while G8 will focus on security issues.

“As far as G20 is concerned, it has been agreed that this will be the premier forum for discussion of the international economic issues,” the prime minister said.

“I talked to the Canadian prime minister (Stephen Harper) who said hereafter G8 will probably deal with security issues much more vigorously than it has been doing thus far in the past,” he added.

For India, this means greater clout on international economic matters as it has become an important constituent of G20, which comprises 19 of the world’s largest and emerging economies, besides EU.

Asked to comment about the view that the Toronto G20 Summit had achieved little, the prime minister said the meeting was in some ways a preparation for the next one in Seoul in November.

“I think the Summit has helped in charting out the agenda and action points for the summit which will be firmed up in Seoul,” he said, adding there was, nevertheless, an agreement that the recovery so far was fragile.

“What is needed is a calibrated attempt at fiscal consolidation rather than later a one-size-fits-all sort of action. In that way there is progress, even those countries which want to go ahead with fiscal consolidation, I think the caveat is that this must be done in a growth-friendly manner.

“My impression is that even those European countries that came out with targets at fiscal consolidation, they have been going about their business with due caution,” the prime minister said.

This, he said, was a noteworthy outcome of the Toronto Summit, which played a useful role in clarifying what is the scope for fiscal consolidation and what manner the process should be found.

Besides India and the EU, the G20 members are the US, Canada, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.

(Arvind Padmanabhan can be contacted at arvind.p@ians.in)