G20 backs global minimum tax deal, pledges to ‘safeguard’ Covid-19 recovery, watch inflation
- The Group of 20 (G20) major economies have endorse a tentative deal for a global minimum corporate tax of 15 per cent
- G20 finance ministers also vowed to support the global economy amid rising inflation pressures and an uneven Covid-19 recovery
Finance leaders from the Group of 20 (G20) major economies on Wednesday endorsed a global deal to revamp corporate taxation and pledged to sustain fiscal support for their economies while keeping a close eye on inflation.
The finance leaders noted in their statement that economic recovery “remains highly divergent across and within countries” and is vulnerable to new variants of Covid-19 and an uneven pace of vaccinations.
“We will continue to sustain the recovery, avoiding any premature withdrawal of support measures, while preserving financial stability and long-term fiscal sustainability, and safeguarding against downside risks and negative spillovers,” the G20 finance leaders said in the statement.
Given rising inflation pressures driven by supply chain bottlenecks and shortages as economies struggle to normalise, the leaders said that central banks are “monitoring current price dynamics closely.”
“They will act as needed to meet their mandates, including price stability, while looking through inflation pressures where they are transitory and remaining committed to clear communication of policy stances,” the G20 communique said.
Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco told a news conference that G20 finance leaders still view elevated inflation in many advanced countries as caused by transitory factors that will fade, such as supply bottlenecks, semiconductor shortages, shipping delays and weather problems.
“But again, these may take months before fading away, so we have to be prepared and communicating very well, how we see the issues. And this is why we are discussing, debating it in the central bank community and in the ECB,” Visco said.
The G20 finance leaders also pledged to work to address shortages of tools to fight the Covid-19 pandemic in low- and middle-income countries in coming months, including vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
The G20 also agreed to support an IMF proposal to create a new “Resilience and Sustainability Trust” to allow part of the $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights currency reserves allocated to IMF member countries to be channelled to aid low-income countries, “vulnerable” middle-income countries and other small developing states.
“The new RST should preserve the reserve asset characteristics of the SDRs channelled through the Trust,” the finance leaders said, adding that they were open to considering options to channel SDRs to multilateral development banks.
“We call for additional IMF members to consider signing voluntary SDR trading arrangements to enhance market capacity,” they said.
