G-20 major economies

Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors
Areas in dark blue represent the member countries in the G-20; light blue represent members of the European Union not individually represented.
Abbreviation	G-20
Formation	1999 2008 (Heads of State Summits)
Purpose/focus	Bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy.[1]
Membership	20  Argentina  Australia  Brazil  Canada  China  France  European Union  Germany  India  Indonesia  Italy  Japan  Mexico  Russia  Saudi Arabia  South Africa  South Korea  Turkey  United Kingdom  United States
Current chair	South Korea (2010)[2]
Staff	None[3]
Website	http://www.g20.org/

The Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G-20, G20, Group of Twenty) is a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 economies: 19 countries plus the European single currency. Their heads of government or heads of state have also periodically conferred at summits since their initial meeting in 2008. Collectively, the G-20 economies comprise 85%^[4] of global gross national product, 80% of world trade (including EU intra-trade) and two-thirds of the world population.^[3]

The G-20 is a forum for cooperation and consultation on matters pertaining to the international financial system. It studies, reviews, and promotes discussion (among key industrial and emerging market countries) of policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability, and seeks to address issues that go beyond the responsibilities of any one organization. With the G-20 growing in stature since the 2008 Washington summit, its leaders announced on September 25, 2009, that the group will replace the G8 as the main economic council of wealthy nations.^[5]

The heads of the G-20 nations have met semi-annually at G-20 summits since 2008. The most recent was held in Toronto on June 26–27, 2010, and the next will be in Seoul on November 11–12, 2010. Starting in 2011, G-20 summits will be held annually.^[3]

Organization

The G-20 operates without a permanent secretariat or staff. The chair rotates annually among the members and is selected from a different regional grouping of countries. The chair is part of a revolving three-member management group of past, present and future chairs referred to as the Troika. The incumbent chair establishes a temporary secretariat for the duration of its term, which coordinates the group's work and organizes its meetings. The role of the Troika is to ensure continuity in the G-20's work and management across host years.

Member countries and organizations

In 2010, there are 20 members of the G-20. These include, at the leaders summits, the leaders of 19 countries and of the European Union, and, at the ministerial-level meetings, the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries and of the European Union :^[3][6]

Region	Member	Leader		Finance Minister		Central Bank Governor	GDP (nominal·PPP) $Million USD		Population
Africa	South Africa	President	Jacob Zuma	Minister of Finance	Pravin Gordhan	Gill Marcus	287,219	492,684	49,320,500
North America	Canada	Prime Minister	Stephen Harper	Minister of Finance	Jim Flaherty	Mark Carney	1,336,427	1,281,064	34,088,000
	Mexico	President	Felipe Calderón	Secretary of Finance	Ernesto Cordero Arroyo	Agustín Carstens	874,903	1,465,726	111,211,789
	United States	President	Barack Obama	Secretary of the Treasury	Timothy Geithner	Ben Bernanke	14,256,275	14,256,275	309,173,000
South America	Argentina	President	Cristina Fernández de Kirchner	Minister of Economy	Amado Boudou	Mercedes Marcó del Pont	310,065	584,392	40,134,425
	Brazil	President	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	Minister of Finance	Guido Mantega	Henrique Meirelles	1,574,039	2,013,186	193,088,765
East Asia	China	President	Hu Jintao	Minister of Finance	Xie Xuren	Zhou Xiaochuan	4,908,982	8,765,240	1,338,612,968
	Japan	Prime Minister	Naoto Kan	Minister of Finance	Yoshihiko Noda	Masaaki Shirakawa	5,068,059	4,159,432	127,390,000
	South Korea	President	Lee Myung-bak	Minister of Strategy and Finance	Yoon Jeung-hyun	Kim Choong-soo	832,512	1,364,148	50,060,000
South Asia	India	Prime Minister	Manmohan Singh	Minister of Finance	Pranab Mukherjee	Duvvuri Subbarao	1,235,975	3,526,124	1,180,251,000
Southeast Asia	Indonesia	President	Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono	Minister of Finance	Agus Martowardojo	Darmin Nasution	539,337	962,471	231,369,500
Western Asia	Saudi Arabia	King	Abdullah	Minister of Finance	Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf	Muhammed Al-jasser	369,671	593,385	25,721,000
Eurasia	Russia	President	Dmitry Medvedev	Minister of Finance	Alexei Leonidovich Kudrin	Sergey Mikhaylovich Ignatyev	1,229,227	2,109,551	141,927,297
	Turkey	Prime Minister	Recep Tayyip Erdoğan	Minister of Finance	Mehmet Şimşek	Durmuş Yılmaz	615,329	880,061	72,561,312
Europe	European Union	E. Council President[7] Commission President[7]	Herman Van Rompuy José Manuel Barroso	Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs	Olli Rehn	Jean-Claude Trichet	16,447,259	14,793,979	501,259,840
	France	President	Nicolas Sarkozy	Minister of the Economy, Industry and Employment	Christine Lagarde	Christian Noyer	2,675,951	2,108,228	65,447,374
	Germany	Chancellor	Angela Merkel	Minister of Finance	Wolfgang Schäuble	Axel A. Weber	3,352,742	2,806,226	81,757,600
	Italy	Prime Minister	Silvio Berlusconi	Minister of Economy and Finance	Giulio Tremonti	Mario Draghi	2,118,264	1,740,123	60,325,805
	United Kingdom	Prime Minister	David Cameron	Chancellor of the Exchequer	George Osborne	Mervyn King	2,183,607	2,139,400	62,041,708
Oceania	Australia	Prime Minister	Julia Gillard	Treasurer	Wayne Swan	Glenn Stevens	997,201	851,170	22,328,632

From 2009 on, Netherlands and Spain were also invited. Netherlands would like to become a member of the G20.

In addition to these 20 members, the following forums and institutions, as represented by their respective chief executive officers, participate in meetings of the G-20:^[3]

• the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
• the Chairman of the International Monetary Fund
• the President of the World Bank
• International Monetary and Financial Committee
• the Chairman of the Development Committee

Membership does not reflect exactly the 19 largest national economies of the world in any given year. The organization states:^[1]

All 20 member nations are among the top 32 economies as measured in GDP at nominal prices in a list published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 2008.^[8] Not represented by membership in the G-20 are Switzerland (19), Norway (25), Taiwan (26), Iran (28) and Venezuela (31) even though they rank higher than some members. Spain (9), Netherlands (16), Poland (18), Belgium (20), Sweden (22), Austria (24), Greece (27) and Denmark (29) are included only as part of the EU, and not independently. When the countries' GDP is measured at purchasing power parity (PPP) rates, all 19 members are among the top 24 in the world in 2008, according to the IMF.^[9] Iran (17), Taiwan (19) and Thailand (23) are not G-20 members, while Spain (12), Netherlands (19) and Poland (20) are only included in the EU slot. However, in a list of average GDP, calculated for the years since the group's creation (1999–2008) at both nominal and PPP rates, only Spain, Netherlands, Taiwan, and Poland appear above any G-20 member in both lists simultaneously.^[10]

It is often argued that the G-20, although it provides broader representation than the G8, is not entitled to make decisions that affect the whole world, because its member states are selected arbitrarily. The G-20 does not have a charter and its debates are not public, making it an "undemocratic institution."^[11] Critics propose an alternative such as an Economic Security Council within the United Nations, where members should be elected by the General Assembly based on their importance in the world economy and the contribution they are willing to provide to world economic development.^[12]

History

G-20 Leaders Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy in Washington, D.C. on 15 November 2008

The G-20, which superseded the G33, which had itself superseded the G22, was foreshadowed at the Cologne Summit of the G7 in June 1999, but was formally established at the G7 Finance Ministers' meeting on 26 September 1999. The inaugural meeting took place on 15–16 December 1999 in Berlin. In 2008 Spain and Netherlands were included by French invitation for the G-20 Leaders Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy.

In 2006 the theme of the G-20 meeting was “Building and Sustaining Prosperity”. The issues discussed included domestic reforms to achieve “sustained growth”, global energy and resource commodity markets, ‘reform’ of the World Bank and IMF, and the impact of demographic changes due to an aging population. Trevor A. Manuel, MP, Minister of Finance, South Africa, was the chairperson of the G-20 when South Africa hosted the Secretariat in 2007. Guido Mantega, Minister of Finance, Brazil, was the chairperson of the G-20 in 2008; Brazil proposed dialogue on competition in financial markets, clean energy and economic development and fiscal elements of growth and development. In a statement following a meeting of G7 finance ministers on 11 October 2008, US President George W. Bush stated that the next meeting of the G-20 would be important in finding solutions to the (then called) economic crisis of 2008. An initiative by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown led to a special meeting of the G-20, a G-20 Leaders Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy, on 15 November 2008.^[13]

Summits

Leaders gather at the G-20 summit in Toronto on 27 June 2010

The G-20 Summit was created as a response both to the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and to a growing recognition that key emerging countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance. The G-20 Summits of heads of state or government were held in addition to the G-20 Meetings of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors who continued to meet to prepare the leaders' summit and implement their decisions. After the debut summit in Washington, D.C. during 2008, G-20 leaders met twice a year in London and Pittsburgh in 2009, Toronto and Seoul in 2010.^[14][15]

Beginning in 2011, when France will chair and host the G-20, the summits will only be once a year.^[16] Mexico will chair and host the leaders summit in 2012.^[17]

	Date	Host country	Host city	Website
1st[18]	November 2008	United States	Washington, D.C.
2nd[18]	April 2009	United Kingdom	London	[3]
3rd[18]	September 2009	United States	Pittsburgh	[4]
4th[19]	June 2010	Canada	Toronto	[5]
5th[20]	November 2010	South Korea	Seoul	[6]
6th[21]	2011	France	TBD
7th[17]	2012	Mexico	TBD

Critique

Because of its involvement with The Council on Foreign Relations,^[22] The Trilateral Commission ^[23] and The Bilderberg Group,^[24] since 1999, many of the G-20 meetings have faced public protest from an eclectic swath of political dissidents, some from the left and others from the right side of the political spectrum. Many protesters' aim is to counteract what they perceive as a drive to initiate a "New World Order".^[25]

The 2010 G-20 was protested by thousands of people, including classical liberals, paleoconservatives, and anarchists using black bloc techniques.

Norwegian perspective

The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, in an interview with Der Spiegel,^[26] called the G-20 "one of the greatest setbacks since World War II." Although Norway is the largest contributor to development programs in the World Bank and United Nations, it is not a member of the E.U. and thus not represented in the G-20.^[26] Norway, like the other 169 or 170 nations not among the G-20, has little or no voice within the group. Støre characterized the G-20 as a "self-appointment group", arguing that it undermines the legitimacy of organizations set up in the aftermath of World War II, organizations like the IMF, World Bank and United Nations:

See also

• G7
• G8
• OECD
• List of G-20 summits

References

Further reading

• Haas, P.M. (1992). "Introduction. Epistemic communities and international policy coordination," International Organization 46,1:1-35.
• Hajnal, Peter I. (1999). The G8 system and the G20 : Evolution, Role and Documentation. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing. 13-ISBN 978-0-7546-4550-4/10-ISBN 0-7546-4550-9; OCLC 277231920
• Reinalda, Bob and Bertjan Verbeek. (1998). Autonomous Policy Making by International Organizations. London: Routledge. 10-ISBN 0-415-16486-9/13-ISBN 978-0-415-16486-3; 13-ISBN 978-0-203-45085-7;10-ISBN 0-203-45085-X; OCLC 39013643
• Augusto Lopez-Claros, Augusto, Richard Samans and Marc Uzan. (2007). The international monetary system and the IMF, and the G-20 : a great transformation in the making? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 10-ISBN 0-230-52495-8/13-ISBN 978-0-230-52495-8; OCLC 255621756

External links

• Official G-20 website
• 2010 Seoul G20
• G-20 Information Centre from the University of Toronto
• A Guide To Committees, Groups, And Clubs from the International Monetary Fund
• G20 Special Report guardian.co.uk
• IPS News - G20 Special Report