Vietnam actively contributes to G20 Summit

The 2nd G20 Sherpa Summit, also known as the G20 Senior Officials' Meeting, took place on March 23-24 in Frankfurt, Germany under the chairmanship of Germany.

Senior officials attend a forum at the G20 Summit in Shanghai. Illustrative photo. (Source: THX/TTXVN)

Along with the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Chad and Senegal, Vietnam is one of the countries participating as guests. The Vietnamese delegation led by Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Vu Quang Minh (Sherpa Vietnam) attended as the host of APEC 2017.

In addition to senior officials from G20 member countries, the conference was also attended by representatives of major international organizations, including the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and representatives of G20 organizations and social groups in the fields of labor (L20), business (B20), science (S20), and socio-political organizations (C20).

This Sherpa Conference takes place in the context of the world economy starting to show clearer signs of recovery, although still slow, protectionist and anti-globalization trends tend to increase, and the governments of some countries adjust their foreign economic policies, affecting the ability to reach consensus on a number of important international issues such as trade liberalization, climate change and the role of multilateral trade and development cooperation organizations.

In that context, inheriting the results achieved at the first G20 Sherpa Conference, the second G20 Sherpa Conference continued to discuss the contents to prepare the report for the G20 Summit held in July 2017, including starting to draft the main messages of the G20 leaders to be announced at this Summit.

Moving towards the theme “Shaping an interconnected world”, the agenda of the second G20 Sherpa Conference includes the following focuses: world economic outlook; improving people's lives through job creation and maximizing the benefits of digitalization; sharing the benefits of globalization through promoting trade, investment, sustainable development, ensuring food security and supporting Africa; health and epidemic issues; ensuring security and strengthening people's trust through anti-terrorism and anti-corruption; climate and energy issues, refugee and immigration issues.

At the conference, the Vietnamese delegation proactively and actively contributed many opinions in the discussion sessions. Speaking at the Trade and Investment session, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Vu Quang Minh conveyed to the conference the results of the first APEC Senior Officials Meeting; recommended that APEC and G20 should strengthen coordination and complement each other in issues of mutual concern, especially trade and investment; emphasized the importance of globalization and multilateral trade and called on countries to pay attention to adjusting domestic policies to ensure that the benefits of globalization are evenly distributed, towards inclusive and sustainable development.

The Vietnamese delegation also shared results and experiences in solving similar issues within frameworks such as the United Nations Conference on Asia-Europe Meeting on enhancing cooperation in transit and trade facilitation and implementing the 2030 Agenda, the Mekong Sub-region cooperation frameworks, the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy and Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar-Vietnam (ACMECS-CLMV)...

Many responsible contributions from the Vietnamese delegation on promoting economic connectivity, tripartite cooperation to support Africa, combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, fighting corruption, combating illegal wildlife trafficking, responding to climate change, etc. were welcomed and approved by the host country Germany and many delegates.

The G20 is a forum that brings together the world's largest economies, accounting for 80% of global GDP and 75% of global trade. Since 2008, the G20 has held an annual summit to affirm its commitment to strengthening policy coordination to address global economic issues.

This is the second time Vietnam has been invited to attend the G20 Summit and related meetings. Vietnam was first invited to attend the G20 meetings in 2010 in South Korea and Canada when Vietnam was the ASEAN Chair. Participating and actively contributing to forums of world leaders such as the G20 will significantly contribute to enhancing Vietnam's role and position in the international arena.

On the sidelines of the Conference, Sherpa - Head of the Vietnamese delegation had a bilateral meeting with the Head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to discuss the possibility of enhancing cooperation between the two sides and promoting OECD support for Vietnam to successfully organize APEC Year 2017.

Vietnam Sherpa also held bilateral meetings with Sherpas from other countries, including Germany, the US, China, South Korea, France, Russia, Singapore, Argentina, etc., on issues discussed at the conference as well as bilateral cooperation issues of mutual interest./.

According to Vietnam+