Clean energy, int'l financial system hot topics of G20 meeting

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-09-15 18:10

Observers will also be keen to see new concrete measures for tackling the world's financial architecture that include regulations to check future crises, he added.

"The only idea that has been generally agreed is the disappearance of tax havens," Milton said. "Six months have passed debating other measures within the G20 mechanism, but what are we doing?"

International financial institutions (IFIs) including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and development banks remain governed by financial structures set up by the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements, which were driven by a need to prevent a further world war and fears about the expected Cold War.

Now that 55 years have passed, the world has changed more profoundly and more quickly than the IFIs, he said.

"It has been recognized that there are structural errors in the international financial system," Milton said. "We have overcome the worst effects of the world financial crisis, but now the sense of urgency has gone."

Initiatives like South America's Bank of the South (BotS) might prove to be a viable alternative to the systems grounded in the Bretton Woods agreements, unless those institutions move swiftly to update themselves, Milton went on to say.

The BotS is a Venezuela-led initiative that has found support in nearby Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia.

"Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has been trying to create a region-wide financial institution because of the obsolesce of the Bretton Woods institutions," Milton said.

"This attempt is worthwhile and could work," he said, adding that it remains to be seen if Pittsburgh can generate realistic ideas to update the IFIs.

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