G20 pledges $5 trillion to revive global economy amid Covid-19 slowdown
New Delhi : The G20 group on nations have come together to fight against the Covid-19 outbreak and its impact on the global economy. They have pledged to inject $5 trillion into the global economy to counter the crisis. The meeting was held with the help of video conference of G20 of leaders where Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the alarming social and economic costs of the pandemic and called for a concrete action plan including reforming the World Health Organisation (WHO), sources said.
"Combatting this pandemic calls for a transparent, robust, coordinated, large-scale and science-based global response in the spirit of solidarity," the G20 said in a statement after the emergency online summit chaired by Saudi Arabia's King Salman and attended by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin among others.
The group of 20 most industrialised nations said they were injecting over $5 trillion into the global economy "to counteract the social, economic and financial impacts of the pandemic". The countries also agreed to work together to find a vaccine for coronavirus.
The G20 nations did not discuss over the origin of the virus and continuous blame on China; the prime emphasis was on the cooperation between the countries.
In a bid to fight against the Covid-19 virus, the nations committed to a number of measures including sharing research and data, strengthening health systems, and expanding manufacturing capacity to meet demand for medical supplies.
"To safeguard the future, we commit to strengthen national, regional, and global capacities to respond to potential infectious disease outbreaks," the statement said.
The meeting via video conference comes at a time when there was a lot of criticism on the slow address of G20 over the pandemic. With over 24,000 deaths and lockdown in several countries the financial shock has been registered on several economies.
On Wednesday, the financial ratings agency Moody's estimated the G20's overall gross domestic product would contract by 0.5 per cent this year, with the US economy shrinking by 2.0 per cent and the eurozone by 2.2 per cent.
