Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

G20 Finance Leaders in Bali to Tackle Ukraine, Inflation


Fri 15 Jul 2022 | 02:00 PM
Ahmad El-Assasy

The Group of 20's (G20) top financial officials from wealthy and developing countries gathered on the Indonesian island of Bali on Friday to discuss ways to combat the economic effects of the conflict in the Ukraine, inflation, and other global challenges.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the finance minister of Indonesia, urged international finance ministers, head of the central bank, and other leaders to "create bridges, not walls" as she launched the two-day gathering. Failure would have "catastrophic" implications, she claimed, especially for less developed countries. Millions, if not billions, of people rely on us, according to Indrawati.

The talks in Bali's Nusa Dua resort town come after a conference of foreign ministers there earlier this month that failed to reach an agreement on Russia's conflict in Ukraine and its effects on the rest of the world.

U.S., British, French, Canadian, and Ukrainian representatives left a G20 finance meeting in Washington, D.C. in April in protest over the presence of Russian envoys. Without issuing a joint statement, that meeting came to an end.

The G20 financial summits do, however, have the advantage of being less politicised, according to Indrawati.

She claimed that Indonesia, the G20's host country, has made an effort to serve as a "honest broker" in bridging the breach between the East and West that has grown since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

Given the enormous tensions over the war, Indrawati asserted that there is no "playbook" for how to reach an understanding.

The world's financial leaders are looking for methods to coordinate how they guide their economies through inflation that is at 40-year highs, unclog supply chains and bottlenecks brought on by the coronavirus epidemic, and protect financial systems against potential hazards.

According to Indrawati, the G20 was able to overcome disagreements in order to deal with the pandemic and the global financial crisis of 2008. She declared, "The decisions we make will have a significant impact on the planet."

Gaining support for a price cap on Russian oil is one of the main objectives of U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and some other Western financial officials. This would limit Moscow's ability to use revenue to fund its war effort while potentially bringing down energy costs and reducing the decades-high inflation seen in many nations.

At a news conference on Thursday in Bali that was broadcast online, Yellen said, "A price cap on Russian oil is one of our most powerful tools to address the pain Americans and families across the world are experiencing at the gas pump and the grocery store right now, a limit on the price of Russian oil."

No price for such a cap has yet been established, according to Yellen, but it must be set at a level "that obviously offers Russia an incentive to continue producing, that would make production profitable for Russia."