This weekend the Summit of the G20, a group of countries Argentina belongs to, was held in Australia.
Argentina’s delegation was headed by the Finance Minister Axel Kicillof, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Héctor Timerman. Both officials also held important bilateral meetings.
For the first time in the history of the G-20, the issue of sovereign debt restructuring was raised in the final communiqué.
The case of Argentina has already effectively served to change the history of sovereign debt emissions.
Today there are about 1 trillion dollars in US denominated debts which include the same pari passu clause, so arbitrarily interpreted by Judge Griesa.
That is to say, if any of such debts has to be restructured, it would raise the same problem as Argentina’s debt had if another jurisdiction, in the same way as the New York court did, makes its own, interested interpretation of any clause.
The representative of the OECD noted that world trade is half of what it should be, according to estimates.
The global investment represents 40 percent of what it was before the crisis in 2008. Due to the crisis, 33 million jobs were destroyed, and if the current level of investment is kept, the jobs’ figures would only recover in 2018 …
A lost decade for the world. A tragedy for millions of people.
On the side of sovereign debt, the debt ratio to GDP in Europe despite the brutal adjustments has increased with the crisis from 68% average in 2006 to 96 % today.
In developed countries it has increased from 75 % in 2006 to 106 % today.
Worst disaster … Impossible. Although everything can always get worse if we persist with the same medicine.
The outcome of the G20 reflects the position of our country at various points.
In particular on the need to address the issue of debt restructuring and the danger that vulture funds are for the international financial system.
Other positions that we have being taking to the G20 since 2008 were reflected:
an agenda for the aggregate demand, quality jobs, infrastructure, fight against financial speculation, tax evasion by big corporations. All issues that today are part of the discussions among the 20 presidents.
One of the themes of the G20 summit was that the global recovery is slow, uneven and is not generating the jobs we need.
Here are some excerpts from the final communiqué of the Summit :
“Risks persist, including in financial markets and from geopolitical tensions. We commit to work in partnership to lift growth.
Tackling global investment and infrastructure shortfalls is crucial to lifting growth, job creation and productivity.
We need policies that take full advantage of global value chains and encourage greater participation and value addition by developing countries.
We are strongly committed to reducing youth unemployment, which is unacceptably high, by acting to
ensure young people are in education, training or employment.
The task now is to finalise remaining elements of our policy framework and fully implement agreed financial regulatory reforms, while remaining alert to new risks.
We call on regulatory authorities to make further concrete progress in swiftly implementing the agreed G20 derivatives reforms.
We welcome the progress made to strengthen the orderliness and predictability of the sovereign debt restructuring process.”
In an annex to the final document, it was made clear in the first place, is included the litigation question -an euphemism to refer to the vulture funds- and instructions are given to the Finance Ministers and Central Banks Governors of all countries in the G20 to work the issue and make a recommendations.
The Argentine delegation returns to the country with the satisfaction of having contributed not only to the G20 with the Argentina experience but also after denouncing clearly and openly the actions of vulture funds, which we believe deserves a political approach by the G20 leaders.
Limiting the speculators, all that is opaque in finances, tax havens, must be a constant concern of the G20 and so it was exhaustively raised.
It seems incredible, these are the same policies that Argentina has been raising since the first G20 back in November 2008 in Washington DC. Presided by George Bush. That little has changed the world. A real shame.
Cristina
