Jubilee USA Statement on G20 Finance Ministers Meeting and Communiqué

G20 finance ministers and central bank governors met in Venice, Italy, on COVID response, economic recovery, vaccines, debt relief and global tax agreements on July 9-10, 2021.

Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development organization Jubilee USA Network and a United Nations finance expert, releases the following statement on the G20 finance ministers meeting and communiqué:

“While the G20 is making critical progress in many COVID response areas, vaccine distribution and production is not moving quickly enough.

"At the next G20 meetings in October, we must agree on a process for everyone on the planet to be able to access vaccines. If we don't, the IMF predicts that the global economy will lose $9 trillion.

“Rising US interest rates mean more countries could be unable to pay their debts and the G20 and IMF will deal with even more defaults.

“The G20 is asserting that the private sector must offer adequate debt relief for any countries that apply for the G20 debt relief process.

“We welcome the G20's endorsement of creating $650 billion in emergency reserve funds or Special Drawing Rights by the end of the summer. Developing countries will receive more than $200 billion in new resources when the IMF takes a final vote.

"More than $400 billion of these new Special Drawing Rights reserve funds will go to wealthy countries.

"The G20 calls for an ambitious target for donating the Special Drawing Rights that rich countries receive to vulnerable countries. Unfortunately, there is no concrete amount for how much wealthy countries should donate to vulnerable countries.

"We must quickly agree on Special Drawing Rights donation vehicles to support all developing and vulnerable countries to access these resources to fight poverty, climate change and the coronavirus health crisis.

“The G20 is right to call on development banks to do more, but the G20 must also be clear on how we can inject much more capital into these banks so they can do more.

“The G20 agreement on global minimum corporate and digital tax is incredibly exciting progress on closing loopholes for tax evasion and avoidance.

“In upcoming tax agreement negotiations, we must do more to increase the benefits for developing countries.

“The G20 is aligning climate change action goals with the Paris Climate Agreement. This will help spur greater action during the November climate meetings the United Kingdom is hosting.

“International cooperation on climate targets and carbon prices needs to account for the impacts on the most vulnerable countries and people.”

Read the G20 Finance Ministers Meeting Communiqué here.

Read Jubilee USA's G20 Finance Ministers press release here.

Read Jubilee USA's response to the IMF approval of $650 bn in Special Drawing Rights here.