Riyadh - Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged the business community to unite in a common voice to help drive the agenda for change across the globe.
Speaking ahead of a discussion on the future of multilateralism at this year’s Business 20 (B20) event in Saudi Arabia, Brown said the world “is at a crossroads” as a result of higher tariffs, building up walls, anti-immigration policies and protectionism, in general.
This is alongside an “aggressive form of nationalism”, typified by US President Donald Trump, who famously launched his ‘America First’ campaign during his inauguration speech four years ago, but one also employed by countries such as China, Russia and India.
Held as the business voice and a prelude to the G20 in Riyadh next month, Brown told the B20 gathering: “The G20 was built around the idea that growth to be sustained has to be shared and that the real enemy of each of us is not another country, but poverty, squalor, pollution, disease, chaos, war and hopelessness.
“It is in our power to change this and give people what they need most of all, hope. And more aware than anyone of the damage that division can do, the business community should now, can now and must now make your voice heard, your values count and your vision of cooperation come alive across the world.”
Brown, who quoted former British premier Winston Churchill, as well as leading economist Maynard Keynes and the great poet Shelley, during a five-minute recorded speech, outlined a four-point plan for the G20 to take forward, including being active in coordinating fiscal and monetary policy as the world enters a recovery phase form the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Now we move from stabilisation to recovery, fiscal comes first. In 2009 China provided the largest fiscal stimulus, today it is America, Japan and Europe. But I want to stress that the cumulative benefits then from coordinating fiscal policies were twice what would have happened if countries simply acted on their own. That’s the case for cooperation,” he said.
Another agenda item he suggested would be to bridge the fiscal gap in poorer countries by extending until the end of 2021 and honouring the promises made for multi-lateral, bi-lateral and private sector debt relief of around $80 billion.
Brown, who was at the helm in the UK during the global financial crisis back in 2009, added: “The G20 is the forum to agree as we did in 2009, the issuing of new international money, the special drawing rights. $1.2 trillion, which can be delivered in two tranches and under which the advanced economies can also transfer their STIs to the poorest countries in greatest need.”
He also called on measures to make organisations such as the G20, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) “fit for purpose” to allow for the cooperation.
