Mohammed bin Abdullah AlJadaan, Minister of Finance • Inside perspective

By supporting countries’ health responses to COVID-19 and driving forward greater international economic cooperation, the G20 is looking forward to a robust and sustained global economic recovery.

We have just concluded our second G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting on the sidelines of the 2020 spring meetings. This pandemic has already taken a great toll on our people and on their economic wellbeing, and we are still faced with extraordinary uncertainty about the depth and duration of this global pandemic.

G20 leaders, during the G20 Extraordinary Leaders’ Summit on 26 March 2020, recognized the gravity of the intertwined public health and economic crises. They have, therefore, committed to a globally coordinated response encompassing all the necessary measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors convened two extraordinary meetings to reach a consensus on a roadmap that will implement our G20 Leaders’ commitments in responding to COVID-19.

Ministers and governors’ urgent collective priority is to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and its intertwined health, social, and economic impacts. We are determined to spare no effort, both individually and collectively, to protect lives, overcome the pandemic, safeguard people’s jobs and incomes, support the global economy during and after this phase, and ensure the resilience of the financial system.

These are unprecedented times that demand swift, strong and significant global action. G20 members have injected over USD7 trillion into the global economy to protect jobs, businesses, and economies, and billions have been allocated to the hunt for vaccines, research, and development, protection of frontline health workers, and addressing trade issues on vital goods. Our efforts must continue and be amplified.

Ministers and governors are committed to using all the available policy tools to support the global economy, boost confidence, maintain financial stability, and prevent deep and prolonged economic effects. As mandated by the extraordinary G20 Leaders’ Summit, today ministers and governors endorsed a G20 Action Plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plan sets out our commitments to specific actions to drive forward international economic cooperation as we navigate this crisis and look ahead to a robust and sustained global economic recovery.

Our aim, with the action plan, is to support the necessary health response and measures to increase our collective health resilience for the future, preventing a liquidity crisis turning into a solvency crisis, and a global recession becoming a global depression.

Ministers and governors have worked as well to deliver international financial assistance to the developing countries. Our actions today include a G20 initiative to suspend debt service payments for the poorest countries. All bilateral official creditors will participate in this initiative, which is an important milestone for the G20. The multilateral development banks are also expected to further explore the options for their participation in this initiative. And through this platform, I also call on private creditors, working through the Institute of International Finance, to participate in this initiative on comparable terms.

In addition, our collective actions today resulted in a comprehensive IMF financial support package and implementing urgently the support proposed by the WBG and the Multilateral Development Banks, amounting to USD200 billion. Ministers and Governors have also taken exceptional measures to develop bilateral swap lines and repo facilities by central banks.

I would like to conclude by reiterating my gratitude to the international community for the commitment, the spirit of cooperation and solidarity that everyone has demonstrated to date, to collectively respond to the global challenge presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. I remain optimistic that by continuing to work together, continuing to assess, protect and rebuild, we will overcome the crisis and come out of this with a strong recovery, more united, more resilient, and better prepared to address any future shocks.

* Sourced from a videoconference made April 15, 2020