India hopes to forge consensus at September G20 leaders meet in Delhi: Amitabh Kant

NEW DELHI: India is hopeful of forging a consensus at the G20 leaders' summit in the national capital later this year, a top official said on Thursday as he urged the group of emerging and developed nations to focus on crucial economic and development issues confronting countries across the world.
“Russia -Ukraine is a crisis. It's an important issue. It's an important issue for Europe. But you must also understand that Covid has left 200 million below the poverty line, 100 million people have lost their jobs, 75 countries in the world are facing a debt crisis, one third of the world is in recession,” Amitabh Kant, India’s G-20 sherpa, told the Times Network’s India Economic Conclave here.
“The world is facing a crisis of climate action and climate finance . Aren’t these important issues? These are very important issues for emerging markets and developing countries. These issues need to be brought to the centrestage, not just the issue of war,” Kant said when asked about the Russia-Ukraine war acting as a stumbling block at the G20 negotiations.
Responding to a question on forging a consensus at the leaders' meeting in New Delhi in September, Kant said a similar challenge confronted the leaders at the Bali G20 summit but India played a key role in helping clinch a deal.
“... we succeeded there and we succeeded because the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) was very clear and his vision was that this is not an era of war, this is an era of diplomacy and dialogue and we used that to bring consensus all around,” said Kant.
“G20 is not a political forum, it is a forum for development, for growth, for financial progress and prosperity. Therefore we used this language at Bali... The whole negotiation was done around this and we were able to bring consensus among all G20 countries and India played a key and critical role in forging unity in Bali and and we are very hopeful of doing this in India as well,” said the G20 sherpa who is playing a key role for the G20 summit under India’s presidency.
Kant said India is hopeful of bringing around all countries, including Russia and China, at the New Delhi summit.
“So we will bring everyone around. We are very confident, we are very hopeful. Our objective is to bring all the 20 countries, including Russia and China, on board and find a way out and we are working very hard towards that.
“We are very positive. We are very optimistic and we are being very futuristic on developmental issues. We are very hopeful that all 20 countries will come around, everyone is impacted right now. When leaders of the world meet in New Delhi on September 9 and 10, the challenge for them will be raising prosperity and progress, the challenge will be inflation hitting one third of the world…, “ said Kant.