STELNA, September 6 (Itar-Tass) - The official program of the two-day G20 summit has ended at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, a suburb of St. Petersburg, after two working meetings and a business breakfast assembling heads of state and leaders of international organisations.
Affairs in Syria, the thorniest international issue but not part of the agenda, was discussed at a working dinner on Thursday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who presided over the forum, was scheduled to review its results at a news conference later on Friday.
Curbing unemployment
The leaders of the Group of Twenty nations have agreed to pool efforts to promote economic growth and create more and better jobs.
“We remain united in our resolve to promote inclusive growth and more and better jobs,” says the G20 Leaders’ Declaration adopted by the G20 summit on Friday.
The G20 leaders admitted in their declaration that unemployment and underemployment in many countries, particularly among young people, remains one of the key challenges confronting the global economy and a top priority for the G20.
“Creating more productive and better quality jobs is at the heart of our countries’ policies aimed at achieving strong sustainable and balanced growth, poverty reduction and increasing social cohesion,” the document says. “We agree that strong and supportive macroeconomic, trade, investment, and labour market policies, sustainable public finance, a sound and well-regulated financial system, and resilient and effective social protection systems are the foundation for sustainable job-creating economic growth.”
The G20 leaders shared the idea that policy reforms to support higher employment and facilitate job creation and better matching of skills with job opportunities were central in their growth strategies. “We commit to take a broad-ranged action, tailored to national circumstances, to promote more and better jobs,” they said in the declaration.
Such measures, according to the declaration, include improvement of the business environment and stimulation of the creation of formal, more productive and rewarding jobs, through pro-growth structural reforms in product and labour markets, including by promoting labour market adaptability and efficiency, ensuring adequate labour protection, as well as appropriate tax regimes and other government initiatives that may be required according to national circumstances.
The G20 leaders also committed to “invest in our people’s skills, quality education and life-long learning programs to give them skill portability and better prospects, to facilitate mobility and enhance employability; foster targeted investments to ensure that labour market infrastructure and effective labour activation policies are in place to help jobseekers find work and bring under-represented and vulnerable groups into the labour market and reduce informality; improve job quality, including through working conditions, wage bargaining frameworks, national wage-setting systems, and access to social protection; develop country-specific plans or sets of actions on employment.
Fighting corruption
The leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) states have agreed to redouble efforts for the global promotion of a culture of intolerance to corruption, it is said in the G20 Leaders’ Declaration adopted at the St. Petersburg summit. The G20 leaders in their Declaration pledge to redouble efforts to achieve this goal, including by increasing transparency and the improvement of measures to promote anti-corruption compliance.
The Declaration states that “corruption is a severe impediment to sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction and can threaten financial stability and the economy as a whole. Corruption is corrosive, destroying public trust, distorting the allocation of resources and undermining the rule of law.”
In this connection, the G20 countries “reiterate determination to combat domestic and foreign bribery, as well as solicitation, and endorse the non-binding Guiding Principles on Enforcement of the Foreign Bribery Offence and the Guiding Principles to Combat Solicitation.”
“We renew our commitment to ensure the independence of the judiciary, as well as to share best practices and enforce legislation to protect whistleblowers, ensure the effectiveness of anti-corruption authorities free from any undue influence, and promote the integrity of public officials,” the document also stresses. In addition, the G20 countries place a high value “on implementing and raising awareness regarding effective anti-corruption education programs to build and reinforce a culture of intolerance towards corruption.”
The document also says that the G20 welcomes “the business community’s initiatives to enhance anti-corruption collective actions and to develop institutional arrangements to promote anti-corruption compliance in the private sector.”
Simultaneously with the adoption of the Declaration, the G20 leaders also approved the Saint Petersburg Strategic Framework to guide the work of the Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG) of the G20. “In 2014, we will advance our existing commitments and consider further G20 actions on the global fight against corruption,” says the summit’s final document.
Brisbane, Australia, will be the next G20 venue in 2014. Turkey has suggested hosting the event in 2015.
The G20 leaders agreed to discuss the progress at their next meeting in Brisbane.