By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : Leaders from the world’s 20 biggest economies, including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have pledged to take a series of actions to fix the financial system and arrest the damage wrought by the global financial crisis.
In a statement released at the conclusion of a historic Summit here Saturday the leaders pledged to take all steps necessary to stabilize the financial system, and noted five common principles on fixing the financial system.
The statement included an agreement to meet again by April 30, 2009 by when their host US President George W. Bush would have handed the charge of world’s largest economy to president-elect Barack Obama.
Earlier, seeking a global response to the financial crisis Manmohan Singh called for a multi-pronged response to arrest the deepening recession and avoid another one in future. “Since the crisis is global, it calls for a co-ordinated global response and this summit is therefore, timely,” he said.
The summit brought together leaders from Group of Seven industrial nations, a dozen emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and South Africa and the European Union. These 20 countries together account for 90 percent of global economy.
Among the measures suggested by Manmohan Singh were a coordinated fiscal stimulus to mitigate the severity and duration of the recession, special initiatives to counter the shrinkage of capital flows to developing countries and a reform of the global financial architecture to prevent similar crises in future.