Pranab Mukherjee arrives in Korea to attend G-20 Finance Ministers' meet

Busan (S. Korea), June 3 (ANI): Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee arrived today in Busan, South Korea on a three days visit to attend G-20 Finance Ministers meeting to be held on June 4-5.

Official delegation led by Mukherjee includes Ashok Chawla, Finance Secretary among others.

G- 20 Central Bank Governors' meeting will also be held during this period in Busan.

During his visit, Mukherjee will also hold bilateral talks with UK Chancellor of Exchequer and Ex-Finance Minister of South Korea who will be Chairing the G-20 Finance Ministers' meet.

Besides it, Mukherjee will also attend the four-member Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) nations Finance Ministers meeting before participating in the main deliberations of the G-20 meeting.

Major issues which are likely to dominate the G-20 Finance Ministers' meet include current Global Economic situation, problem of rising fiscal deficits going upto nine percent of GDP and high debt/GDP ratios in advanced economies and an action plan to tackle them.

Beside, a review will be done of actions taken so far for building a framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth to correct various global imbalances as decided in Pittsburgh Summit.

This mainly includes need for fiscal contraction, promoting sound fiscal and monetary policy frameworks, building sound financial sector and adoption of collective policy options as a common strand across all group of countries for moving towards a more balanced economy.

Busan Ministerial meet will be a stock taking exercise on the progress of regulatory reforms in financial sector which mainly include international rules on capital, leverage and liquidity, compensation reforms, OTC Derivatives and High Standard Accounting Standards and Non Cooperative Jurisdictions.

There will be stress for completing the regulatory reforms as per the committed timelines.

Other issues to be deliberated during G-20 meet include reform of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) which has always been part of G-20 AGENDA over the past Summits. While operational level reforms in IFIs have been achieved including increased lending capacity, creation of flexible lending facilities and liquidity provision to emerging economies. (ANI)