Anxiety, hope build up ahead of G-20 summit

By Cho Jin-seo

Staff reporter

The G-20 summit in Seoul, which is five months away, is expected to mark a crucial point in global efforts to set up a new financial architecture.

Fresh from the lack of consensus in the Toronto summit over the weekend, the world's leading 20 economies have their work cut out for them, and so a series of meetings have been scheduled in the lead-up to the Nov. 11 to 12 summit in Seoul.

The first G-20 Summit was in November 2008 and it has been held three times since then. The group is aiming to produce a meaningful and binding agreement on key financial reform issues such as new bank regulations and a global financial safety net by the Seoul summit, which means lots of negotiations need to take place in the remaining 135 days.

The tough work starts next month when high-ranking officials from each nation meet in Seoul for a "Sherpa" meeting. This is a closed meeting and dates have yet to be confirmed, says an official from the G-20 preparation committee in Seoul. Meanwhile, there will be a smaller workshop in Paris next week. As a side event, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will have a conference on global economic development in the city of Daejeon from July 12 to 13.

August will be a vacation month for the G-20 members. The talk will resume on September 4 for two days when vice finance ministers and vice governors of central banks meet in the southwestern city of Gwangju.

In October, there will be another Sherpa meeting where the countries will set the tone for the finance minister-central bank governors' meeting, which is slated to take place on October 22 and 23 in Gyeongju.

In addition, October will see the general meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C. Though not official G-20 meetings, they will help set the tone by advising on economic policies and global financial reforms. This meeting is also crucial for the two organizations themselves because the G-20 nations are going to redistribute their voting rights before the November summit.

By this time, the G-20 countries should have the agenda settled with little disagreement left. Three weeks later, leaders of nations will gather in Seoul for the final decision on global financial reform.

The Seoul summit is to take place on November 11 and 12 at the COEX exhibition center in southern Seoul. There are talks of closing down shops there during the event for security reasons.

Leaders of several G-20 nations will have little time to rest even after the summit. They will be flying to Yokohama, Japan, to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which will be held back-to-back with the G-20 event. South Korea, Japan, China, the United States, Australia, Russia and Indonesia belong to both groups.

According to the Seoul summit preparation committee, some 10,000 government officials from G-20 nations will be visiting Korea for the meeting, along with around 3,000 people from the media.

Seoul also wants to invite many of the world's business leaders for a business conference just before the G-20 Summit.