REMARKS BY AMBASSADOR VANU GOPALA MENON, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SINGAPORE TO THE UNITED NATIONS AT THE BRIEFING BY THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ON THE ONGOING PREPARATIONS FOR THE UPCOMING G20/G8 SUMMITS IN CANADA, 18 JUNE 2010

REMARKS BY AMBASSADOR VANU GOPALA MENON, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SINGAPORE TO THE UNITED NATIONS AT THE BRIEFING BY THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ON THE ONGOING PREPARATIONS FOR THE UPCOMING G20/G8 SUMMITS IN CANADA, 18 JUNE 2010

Thank you, Mr Secretary-General, for your briefing today on many issues, including your preparations and that of the UN for the upcoming Toronto G-20 Summit. We would also like to thank you for your efforts in gathering inputs from Member States. We hope that this would help you in conveying the broad sense of the wider UN membership during the Toronto Summit. We also hope that in future, this process of consultations could begin earlier so that we could better equip you with more substantive inputs for the Summit.

The impact of the financial and economic crisis on global growth has been significant and it has had severe ramifications on our global and national efforts at poverty eradication and the achievement of the MDGs. The problem of lower global growth and global imbalances will take some length of time to redress. Some countries are currently undertaking structural reforms to raise productivity, plug infrastructure gaps and develop markets. In order for developing countries to continue such reforms, where necessary and based on their national circumstances, creative and innovative approaches towards financing for development will be required. That will help contribute to economic recovery ground-up.

At the same time, removing barriers to intra-regional as well as inter-regional trade and investment is vital. Keeping trade open will be essential for sustained global recovery. While renewed policy action to limit protectionism must come from all countries, the G-20 could set an example by sending a clear signal of their commitment to keep open international trade and to the completion of the Doha Development Agenda. It must live up to its rhetorical commitment to "do whatever is necessary to promote global trade and reject protectionism". Otherwise, the dangers of falling back into protectionism are real.

We should bear in mind that the policies governments have put in place will not necessarily prevent the scale and duration of unemployment from far exceeding those of previous recessions. A report of the Peterson Institute entitled "G-20 in the Wake of the Great Recession" (to be released ahead of the forthcoming G-20 Summit in Toronto) makes the point that such unemployment conditions could ramp up pressure on protectionism, which will have great costs. The report assesses that a successful Doha outcome could deliver GDP gains of over $280 billion annually for participants around the globe. The G-20 should therefore go beyond the anti-protectionist rhetoric by ensuring that they themselves live up to this commitment by at least not erecting new tariff barriers to international trade. The G-20's decisions should essentially protect the development gains made by developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable.

In this regard, a key message that you could underscore at the Summit is that the G-20's decisions would not only have an impact on its members but also on all non G-20 countries, that is the rest of us.

Important progress has been made in the last one year. However, the G-20 is still an evolving process. There is much scope for improvement.

First, while the invitations extended for Chairs of important regional institutions such as ASEAN, NEPAD and the African Union to the Toronto G-20 Summit is an important step forward, the G-20 should regularize the participation of these and other established regional organizations, as this will allow for G-20 deliberations to be also followed up at the regional level.

Second, there needs to a more deliberate effort to engage and consult a wider range of countries that have significant interests in the G-20 discussions, and which can contribute to global solutions. In particular, there should be sufficient flexibility in the G-20 process to provide for the participation of non G-20 members in discussions on specialized issues. By adopting such an approach of "variable geometry", the G-20 process would benefit in two ways. First, all the relevant players in different specialized areas would be brought into the process. Second, this would give the G-20 decisions greater buy-in globally.

I am a little perplexed by the suggestion that the SG will be going to the Toronto G-20 Summit as an observer. As far as I am aware, the SG has been invited to the Toronto Summit as a full participant, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the G-20 Leaders and with the right to participate fully in all the discussions. But this confusion over the SG's status underscores the need for all future hosts of G-20 Summits to invite the SG and his Sherpa to the Summits and preparatory meetings respectively, as a matter of course. The invitations should be issued automatically without a need to ask for one.

Many of these points have been articulated by the informal Global Governance Group (3G) in meetings such as these and through a joint 3G statement and a 3G paper entitled "Strengthening the Framework for G-20 Engagement of Non-members", which was circulated as a UN document on 11 March.

Before I close, let me add that it would be extremely useful if you and your Sherpa could provide the UN membership with an update of the discussions at the Toronto Summit after the meeting. Thank you.

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