Pretoria: Technical meetings under the Group of 20 (G20) Finance Track have begun this week with a meeting of the Framework Working Group (FWG). This follows South Africa’s commencement of its G20 Presidency with the hosting of the G20 Sherpa and Finance Track Meetings in December 2024.
According to South African Government News Agency, the National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank are jointly responsible for overseeing the work of the G20 Finance Track. The mandate of the FWG is to promote strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive growth by identifying, monitoring, and assessing global macroeconomic risks, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties, and recommending suitable policy responses to global shocks and cross-cutting global challenges.
The G20 is a grouping of developed and developing countries that together form a powerful bloc, representing at least 85% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product and some 75% of international trade, making the FWG critical. The first day of the meeting focused on the main headwinds to global growth, ongoing supply and demand risks to inflation, and the main fiscal risks to growth and inflation. It also addressed the economic outlook for Africa.
The second day of the meeting will discuss the draft FWG work plan for 2025, which includes priority areas identified by the South African Presidency. South Africa’s outlined priorities include enhancing global economic resilience in light of growth risks like fragmentation and macroeconomic imbalances; strengthening macroeconomic foundations and growth reforms in light of climate change; and assessing labor productivity, technological development, and demographic change.
This week’s FWG meeting is the first of four to be held. The remaining three meetings for this Working Group are scheduled for April, June, and September, in person, in venues across the country. The outcomes of these meetings will inform discussions at the meetings of the Finance and Central Bank Deputies and Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. The G20 Leaders’ Summit is expected to be held in the latter half of 2025.