Global finance, business leaders to meet in Ankara

ANKARA

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Global business leaders will discuss world economy risks and their expectations from G-20 countries in a series of meetings in the capital city of Ankara on Sept. 3-5. 

Labor and employment ministers of G-20 countries will hold a series of sessions Sept. 3-4. Member states’ finance ministers and central bankers will seek solutions to recent economic problems at high-level meetings Sept. 4-5. 

Concerns about China’s economy and worries about the Greek financial crisis will be high on the minds of finance ministers and central banks when they meet.

IMF Director Christine Lagarde, Indian Central Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan and his Mexican and Turkish counterparts, Agustin Carstens and Erdem Başçı, will be among the speakers.

Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, the head of B-20 Turkey and the president of Turkey’s Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), will also host the B-20 meetings that are planned to gather some 1,000 business people and representatives of the finance world from 60 countries. 

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan are scheduled to address the attendees. 

The B-20 is a sideline organization to the G-20, which will be headed by Turkey this year. 

At the conference, TOBB chairman Hisarcıklıoğlu will share the results of the B-20’s efforts since December 2014, when he took the seat simultaneously with Turkey’s G-20 chair. 

Turkey’s presidency will end this year with a high-level global meeting at Antalya, the Turkish coastal province by the Mediterranean Sea, in November. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to lead the meetings in Antalya. Leaders representing 85 percent of the world economy are set to attend the summit.

Around 13,000 people, including U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are expected to attend the meeting.

Turkey has so far organized over 10 meetings on five continents as the current G-20 president.

At their first meeting under the Turkish presidency in February, finance ministers and central bankers sketched an uncertain outlook for global growth, with major economies running at different speeds and monetary policies diverging.

But as the global economy has worsened, Turkey looks unlikely to be able to play a more decisive role, especially since the man originally tasked with coordinating the G-20 presidency, Ali Babacan, is no longer the deputy prime minister, nor a member of the cabinet, according to a Reuters analysis.
 
Babacan was replaced last week when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was forced to form a temporary, power-sharing cabinet after his AKP failed to find a junior coalition partner following the loss of its single-party majority in June.

“In the past, we would have been looking at some kind of coordinated global strategy to turn the mood ... but [we] doubt we will see that,” Timothy Ash, credit strategist at Nomura, said of this week’s meetings in Ankara, as quoted by Reuters. 

The G-20 agreed in Brisbane, Australia, last year to launch new measures to raise their collective gross domestic product growth and create millions of new jobs over the next five years.

The pledge, called the Brisbane Action Plan, entailed hundreds of commitments. Turkey has said implementation of those commitments is critical to the credibility of the G-20.