G20 meeting of finance ministers ends with no communique, absent delegates

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana and Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago said they were not deterred by hiccups and disagreements in their G20 meeting this week, which prevented the meeting from releasing a communique.

The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors' meeting took place in Cape Town from Monday to Thursday and saw ministers of finance hold meetings about key priorities in their respective portfolios.

However, this particular meeting failed to produce a communique, as is the standard procedure for a sectoral G20 meeting, but instead relied on a “chair’s summary”.

This move has become common at G20 meetings since Russia’s war in Ukraine rendered communiqués at all G20 meetings untenable in Indonesia.

In a frank moment, while briefing reporters on Thursday, Godongwana said the failure of the meeting to produce a communique was not ideal. But he maintained that the meeting held “very constructive discussions”, on matters such as global financial inclusion and international taxation.

“I’m most satisfied with the fact that the work programme has been adopted and agreed upon ... We have been working hard on getting a work programme which will form the basis of discussions for future meetings.

To that extent, I am happy with that programme. I’m not happy with the fact that we couldn’t achieve consensus and issue a communique.”

He said most members endorsed the work of the programme, which provides the basis for the presidency to work with co-chairs and international organisations to implement a work programme for the year of South Africa’s presidency of the G20.

“The South African president has been keen to use every opportunity to forge consensus as far as possible. Though it also respects and acknowledges that differences remain. Consequently, we will issue a chair’s summary based very much on the version we have discussed extensively and refined in the past few days.”

Asked about US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s absence from the G20 meeting, Godongwana said the secretary indicated his intention to attend but President Donald Trump had called a cabinet meeting on short notice which Bessent needed to attend.

The absence of delegates and officials of the US at the G20’s activities has come into sharp focus since US secretary of state Marco Rubio skipped last week’s meeting of G20 foreign ministers over accusations from the Trump administration that the South African government was confiscating land owned by Afrikaners.

Kganyago said the meeting of central bank governors at the G20 meeting had absent delegates, but that did not hamper the progress of the meeting and that every country was represented in some capacity.

“Most all of the governors were there. All central banks were represented. To the extent that there wasn’t a governor, there would have been a deputy governor with full delegated authority. Every country was represented.”

Asked about the seriousness of a failure to finalise a communique at the meeting, Godongwana said this has happened before under different circumstances, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. This year, he said, this occurred for different reasons.

“The issue of the communique and the absence thereof is not something new. To my knowledge, since the Russia-Ukraine war, it has been difficult to find a joint communique. We have relied since Indonesia 2022 on what is called the chair’s statement. Same in India. Brazil managed to do something different but the matters that have occasioned that are slightly different now.”

The two officials said the meetings held differences on topics including the modalities for sustainable finance, transformation of the global debt structure and financial sector issues.

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