India wants financial reforms to continue

“While it may appear that the immediate global economic and financial crisis is behind us, it would be early to say that we are on the path of long-term recovery,” said External Affairs Minister S M Krishna while addressing the 14th summit of G-15 here.

Krishna said that sustainable recovery of the global economy would depend on several factors, including how the developed economies would fare, quantum of investment for infrastructure development and stability of capital flows to the developing markets.
He also stressed on the need to ensure appropriate macro-economic adjustments and called for avoiding complacency in financial sector reforms.

“We also must work for ensuring a balanced outcome of the Doha Round making it sure that it addresses the concerns of the developing countries,” he added.

New Delhi’s call for comprehensive reforms in multilateral lending agencies came just weeks after developing nations got greater say in deciding how the World Bank would be run.

India’s voting rights in the World Bank went up to 2.91 per cent from 2.77 per cent, while that of China went up to 4.42 per cent from 2.91 per cent.

In his opening remarks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who chaired the G-15 since the last summit in 2006, blamed “deception, materialism and monopoly” of “capitalist powers” for the global economic crisis that aggravated poverty and food crisis in poor countries and resulted in sufferings in developing countries too.

“The world economy’s reliance on the principles of liberal capitalism and these recent incidents show that capitalism has lost its relevance,” he added.

Krishna is representing India in the G-15 summit. The bloc was born out of the Non Aligned Movement in 1989 and it now comprises 17 developing nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Krishna stressed on making the G15 an effective platform, not only for South-South cooperation, but also for policy articulation in the global discourse in the areas of trade, money and finance, equitable development, food and energy security, climate change and other issues of concern to people of the bloc’s member-countries.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa took over the chairmanship of G-15 from Ahmadinezad. Apart from Rajapaksa and Ahmadinezad; Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attended the summit. Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the conclave as special guests.