The world’s financial leaders are likely to pledge on Friday to support a robust global recovery and to boost the International Monetary Fund’s resources so it can help poorer countries fight off the effects of the global health crisis. Finance ministers and central bank governors of the world’s top 20 economies, called the G20, will hold a video-conference on Friday and the global response to the unprecedented havoc wreaked by the coronavirus on the economy will top the agenda. Hopes for constructive discussions at the meeting, chaired by Italy, are high among G20 countries because it is the first since Joe Biden, who vowed to rebuild cooperation in international bodies, become US president.
”The ministers will talk about the need for fiscal policies for a swift and robust recovery because they want to avoid the risk of too early a reduction in fiscal support,” one G20 official said.
The meeting comes as the United States is readying a USD 1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus and the European Union has jointly put together already more than 3 trillion euros to keep the economy going despite COVID-19 lockdowns.
But despite the large sums, problems with the global rollout of vaccines and the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus mean the future of the recovery remains uncertain. While the IMF sees the US economy returning to pre-crisis levels already at the end of this year, it may take Europe until the middle of 2022 to reach that point.