Thursday, March 26, 2009

The agenda for the G-20

The BBC has a really good breakdown of the issues that are ahead for the G-20 meeting. The one-day summit is taking place in London on April 2nd.

Of course, the big topic will be the world economic recession. The leaders of the world's wealthiest countries will talk about what they can do to get the economy growing again.

The BBC has the agenda divided into 5 categories, reviving the world economy, restoring lending, tougher rules for banks, a bigger role for International Monetary Fund, and more help for developing countries. It is that last heading that we will focus on in our snippet, but we encourage you to give the full article a look at.

The world's poorest countries are likely to be hard-hit by the downturn.

The World Bank estimates that an extra 50 million people will fall into poverty because of the global recession.

But there is concern that many countries are now likely to cut their development aid.

Gordon Brown would like world leaders to pledge to maintain that aid, and if possible to increase it in line with targets agreed at the Gleneagles summit in 2005.

However, development groups such as the Overseas Development Institute say that at least $50bn more is needed for sub-Saharan Africa to escape the worst effects of the crisis.

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