ISTANBUL
Turkey’s deputy prime minister told G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday that "confidence" is key to generating the kind of investment and necessary growth to build a better global economy.
"In order to have higher rates of growth, confidence is going to be the key element for all the G20 countries and beyond throughout this year," said Ali Babacan in the opening speech of the meeting.
Turkey is hosting the first major two-day G20 conference of 2015 as it takes on the role of president of the multi-national body.
The Turkish G20 meeting comes amid concerns cast by an impasse between Greece and Europe, uncertain oil prices which have fallen rapidly in recent months and the threat to emerging economies due to currencies losing against a strengthening dollar.
G20 countries are aiming to tackle slow growth with a pledge for 2 points higher global GDP by 2018, despite stagnation in Europe and Japan.
Babacan also stated his hope for targeted growth, referring to the more-than-1,000 commitments and structural reforms made by G20 countries. His comments come after he said yesterday that Turkey wants to set clear goals for G20 countries’ investment commitments, even though it was "not clear" if all members of the international body wanted to set such targets.
A report by the OECD on Monday said that developed countries had seemingly slowed in implementing reforms, while developing countries increased their pace of change.
"If you really do what you committed... we believe that the global economy will pick up even faster," said Babacan on Tuesday.
