Two developed countries are out; India and Brazil are in. The BRIC countries, namely Brazil, India and China, move up to the top 10; three OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries slide below the line. I am referring to the recent change in the membership and country ranking of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 24-member board. This is what was agreed at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in the run-up to the G20 Seoul Summit, to be held on November 11-12. The transformation is emblematic of a tectonic shift in economic power among countries and heralds a new era in global financial governance. At the centre of this remarkable evolution is the G20 as a prime mover.
The Seoul summit will be the fifth since the G20 leaders got together in the immediate aftermath of the global economic crisis in 2008. Thanks to the G20-led concerted efforts, the world has been able to avoid another Great Depression. The successfully-performed feat has earned the G20 an honourable title: ‘a premier forum for international economic cooperation’. To be fair, the G20 that accounts for 85% of the global domestic product and two-thirds of the world population deserves due respect on its own merit. The emergence of the G20, with both developed and emerging markets as members, is definitely a welcome step forward from the standpoint of global governance, when compared with the G7 as an exclusive club of high-income countries.
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