Harper Says G20 Needs To Keep Previous Promises Before Making More

Ottawa wants the G20 to make good on its previous promises before it plunges into new areas.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper released a note in Davos, Switzerland, this morning in advance of a keynote address he’ll give this afternoon to reveal his agendas for the June G8 and the G20 summits in Canada.

He said the G20, which has become the world’s leading economic decision-making organization, needs to focus on existing agreements to make the global economy mores stable and resistant to crisis.

Harper said the group needs “less promises, more results” if it wants to prove itself a productive organization in global economics.

Business leaders and economists attending the high-level annual World Economic Forum have repeatedly called on the G20 to form a consensus on how to stabilize the financial system and ensure a robust and lasting recovery.

But the G20, which groups the world’s G8 rich countries as well as key emerging markets, has already committed to better controlling banking behaviour as well as to putting in place enough stimulus to get the world economy rolling again.

At previous summits in Pittsburgh and London last year, the countries also said they would resist protectionism, and work towards knocking down more trade barriers.

And they promised to build a framework that would alleviate huge trade and currency imbalances that destabilize the global economy.

Harper says wants to see better progress on those commitments.

“The discussion (at the Toronto summit) should be less about new agreements than accountability for existing ones,” he said in the statement.

Canada is actually co-hosting the G20 this year, in partnership with South Korea, which will hold a second G20 summit in Seoul in November.

Korean President Lee Myung-bak also stressed the need to follow up on previous promises made on financial regulation and reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Lee said he will also focus on giving developing countries a louder voice at the G20.

And he also proposed that the G20 create a “global financial safety net” that would help countries deal with sudden reversals in capital flows.

Many emerging markets have suffered suddenly and deeply when financial markets pull their investments out without warning, and often without good reason.

Harper is meeting with Lee in Davos, as well as philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates. He’s also meeting with former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who is active in driving the recovery effort in Haiti.

Clinton asked the Davos audience to ante up for Haiti. He asked for cash above all, but also for an immediate donation of pickup trucks to help distribute aid.

“I need 100, yesterday,” he said. “Right now we have to worry about how to get through the week.”

The Davos meeting brings together 2,500 bankers, politicians and thinkers in an attempt to set the global economic agenda for the coming year.

While this year’s meeting is far more upbeat than in the previous two years during the global financial crisis, a sense of unease hangs over the ski-resort town.

“Their concern is two-fold. It’s no surprise, governments can’t continue to be stimulating with the deficits they’ve been running. At some point, you’ve got to take the patient out of intensive care….and will the patient be really able to operate on its own?” said Eric Siegel, who heads Export Development Canada, the a Crown corporation for trade financing.

“The economic recovery is weak, and the ability of the consumer to pick that up is the ongoing question,” he said in an interview.

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