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The conference was addressed by eminent academics and policy-makers, of whom 20 were international participants representing 12 countries and 20 were Indian participants. Special addresses were delivered at the conference by Pranab Mukherjee, Finance Minister of India, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission, Kemal Dervis, Vice-President of the Brookings Institution and former Finance Minister of Turkey, and R. Gopalan, Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs in the Indian Ministry of Finance. Their speeches are on ICRIER‟s website.
This was the third in a series of international conferences on G-20 issues organised by ICRIER and its partners, the earlier two conferences having being held prior to the Toronto and Seoul G-20 Summit Meetings in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Continuing with this practice, this year's conference was held with a view towards the next G-20 Summit Meeting which is to be held on 3-4 November in Cannes, France.
The deliberations at the conference recognized that this forthcoming Summit would be specially challenging since it would have to respond to the new and immediate threats to world economic stability in the form of continuing slow recovery in the advanced economies, political uncertainties in the US and the unfolding sovereign debt crises in Europe. At the same time it would have the responsibility of carrying forward the long-term tasks set by previous Summits of reforming global economic governance and advancing the development agenda. It was felt that these challenges could be addressed only by carrying forward the spirit of mutual cooperation and the ability for decisive action which enabled the G-20 to take the lead in the global economic policy response when the crisis originally emerged and grew out of all proportions.
The work of the conference was divided into six sessions on financial sector regulatory reforms, global imbalances, the international monetary system, capital flows and financial safety nets, the development agenda and commodity markets and food security. We report below some of the key issues discussed in these sessions.