India, S. Korea place development as top item on G-20 agenda

Busan (S.Korea), June 4 (ANI): India and South Korea, on Friday said they will put 'development' on top of the G-20 agenda.

The commitment was made after Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee held discussions with Il Sakong, the chairman of Presidential Committee for the G-20 Finance Ministers Summit.

The two days of talks will bring together twenty of the world's most developed and emerging economies to Busan.

After the talks, Mukherjee said:"I had a very fruitful discussion with the Chairperson of the Presidential Councils for the summit. There are many areas of common interests and convergence of the views about how the summit will be made more effective and development will play an important core agenda of the functioning of the G-20. Ourselves and Korea have the convergence of views."

Il Sakong also reiterated India's stand on core agenda of development and said that the meeting was very fruitful and "we agreed on almost everything as we have been very closely cooperating with India in the preparation of G-20 Summit."

He added:" There are a number of agenda items which related to previous agreements made by G20 leaders. But in addition, India and Korea are very much interested in 'Development' being up on the agenda and also the strengthening of financial safety net particularly for developing and emerging economies."

Commenting on the European crisis and the likelihood of it dominating summit deliberations, the South Korean Leader said: "I don't think it will dominate the summit, but certainly it will be substantially part of the discussion."

Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors will be working on a host of options for their political leaders to be endorsed at a summit in Toronto at the end of this month with a view to making more specific commitments at a follow-up summit in Seoul in November this year during the two-days meeting here.

The meeting in Busan will also try to thrash out an agreement ahead of the Toronto summit on how to tackle banks. Policy makers want to make it easy and quick to wind up an ailing bank so that it does not destabilise the financial system, as investment bank Lehman Brothers did when it crashed in 2008. By Ravi Shankar (ANI)