G20 can work towards global good: FM

Washington: Ahead of India taking over the annual presidency of G-20 coming December, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the grouping of the top-20 economies of the world has great potential to work towards the global public good. "G-20 has a great potential to work towards global goods. When I say public goods, will also have to be made far more strengthened. India stack, for instance, can become a global stack.

Efficient cross-border payments and cheaper remittances are all the benefits which we can derive out of it," Sitharaman told a think-tank here. Responding to a question during a fireside chat with eminent Indian American economist Eshwar Prasad at the prestigious Brookings Institute, Sitharaman said these are some of the areas in which she would want the G-20 to work together. "We love to work together with them and get some good outcomes," she said. Observing that India is taking the G-20 presidency from Indonesia at challenging times, Sitharaman said India has been working very closely together with the membership.

"The time demands that we work to achieve some of these outcomes. Multilateral institutions need to be strengthened. Their capacity to deal with a pandemic or any future such stressful global developments will have to be bettered," she said. "We need to have the finance to deal with any future pandemic or disaster. Climate-related disasters are now becoming far more frequent than we could imagine. Resilient infrastructures are required. Do we know how we can handle cloud bursts or sinking islands and so on? Climate finances must be something which is smooth. A lot of talks have happened, but really has not seen the light of day," Sitharaman said.