G20 Sherpas focus on building consensus to finalise draft leaders' declaration

New Delhi: With just four days left for the G20 Summit, top negotiators from the member nations of the bloc on Monday held extensive negotiations to build consensus on a number of crucial issues with an aim to finalise the draft leaders' declaration for the conclave. The G20 Sherpas primarily focused on having a globally acceptable governance framework for digital public infrastructure, steps for ensuring women-led development, climate financing and ways to strengthen multilateral development banks (MDBs), people familiar with the matter said.

The three-day Sherpa meeting is taking place at ITC Grand Bharat hotel in Haryana's Nuh district. The meeting is being chaired by India's G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant. China has reservations on various aspects of these agenda items resulting in difficulties in building consensus, the people cited above said. The G20 operates under the principle of consensus and any divergent view by any one member country can create hurdles. India is hosting the G20 Summit on September 9 and 10 in its capacity as the current president of the bloc.

The draft leaders' declaration was based on India's priorities such as inclusive and sustainable growth, green development, reform of multilateral institutions and digital transformation. "The focus has been to build consensus for the draft declaration," said a source. The draft leaders' declaration also features India's proposal to accord permanent membership of the G20 to the African Union. It is not immediately known whether there is full consensus on the proposal. India is also facing the uphill task of building consensus on the text to refer to the Ukraine crisis in the leaders' declaration.

India is finding it difficult to build consensus on the issue in view of sharp differences between the West and Russia-China combine. Both Russia and China had agreed to the two paragraphs on the Ukraine conflict in the Bali declaration, but they backtracked from it this year creating difficulties for India. Almost all key meetings held under India's G20 presidency, including those of finance and foreign ministers, could not come out with consensus documents in view of opposition from Russia and China to any text referring to the Ukraine conflict.

The G20 or Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum of the world's major developed and developing economies. The members represent around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population. The grouping comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the US and the European Union