G20 chiefs meet on Covid, aid to poor

G20 finance ministers and central bankers aim Friday to align plans to relaunch the global economy after the coronavirus pandemic and to limit the harm to the worst-off nations shut out of the race for vaccines.

The video conference exchanges, led by Italy, is the first such meeting in post for US President Joe Biden's new Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, expected to be far less confrontational than Donald Trump's representatives at past gatherings.

"With the new American administration, it will certainly be easier to reach a deal" for increased aid to poorer nations, international economy professor Lucia Tajoli of Milan's Polytechnic business school told AFP.

Bu while "Joe Biden's approach to international cooperation is much more open... it won't be easy to gather funds given the economic crisis hitting many countries," she added.

Washington urged wealthy G20 countries to launch a truly global, coordinated vaccination campaign. "Without access to vaccines, low-income countries in particular will experience further tragic loss of life and needlessly delay their economic recoveries," Yellen wrote in an open letter to G20 finance counterparts.

Yellen also signalled openness to issuing new so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) at the International Monetary Fund to worse-off countries, reversing a Trump position.

Several G20 countries have already suggested the move, after the financial instruments-which can be exchanged for US dollars, euros, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen or British poundsproved their worth as crisis firefighting tools in 2009.

Financial crisis-era SDR allocations amounted to around half the $500 billion now under discussion. Last year, the rich country club also agreed a pause in debt interest payments for the poorest countries, extending it until June 30 this year.

However, the impact of this initiative "hasn't been as broad an impact as had been hoped. The private sector didn't participate in it and, in many parts of the world, the China Development Bank (CDB) has not been participating," the President of the World Bank, David Malpass, told Italy's La Stampa newspaper.

In November, the G20 finance ministers also agreed a framework for reducing debt burdens. So far Chad, Zambia and Ethiopia have asked for their debt to be restructured.

"Debt alleviation, which had been swept under the rug, is now on the agenda and we can certainly expect a step forward," Federico Niglia, an international relations professor at Rome's Luiss university, said to AFP.

So far just 46 of the 73 eligible countries have delayed debt interest payments worth a total of $5.7 billion. The debt question deals with minuscule amounts compared with the $14 trillion mobilised by G20 countries to reboot their own pandemic-hit economies.

The recovery "from the worst recession since World War II" will be "long and uncertain," IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned in a separate interview with La Stampa. "The prospects for recovery are diverging dangerously across countries", against the backdrop of "a slow rollout of vaccines even as new mutations are spreading", she said.

"So, my deepest concern is that the Great Lockdown of 2020 could morph into a Great Divergence in 2021 and beyond", Georgieva added.