Chema Alonso
Chief Data Officer, Telefonica.
As you all know, the Business 20 (B20) Australia Summit was held on the past 17-18 July, in Sydney. Here are some outcomes of this meeting:
More than 350 business leaders from G20 nations attended to the summit in Sydney to deliver the main recommendations from the business representatives to the G20 Leaders. The motto of the G20 this year is how to drive economic and jobs growth. Together with government representatives, some key leaders of international organizations also attended the B20 Summit, such as Roberto Azevêdo, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, and Ángel Gurría, Secretary‑General of the OECD.
The keynote address at the opening of the B20 summit was delivered by Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott. He underlined that business was the primary creator of economic wealth and job creation and welcomed the work done by the B20, in an effort to find common solutions for the social and economic welfare worldwide. Here is the video of his opening.
On the 18th, the B20 delivered its pack of recommendations. Richard Goyder AO, Chair of B20 and Managing Director and CEO of Wesfarmers, presented the B20’s recommendations to Australia Treasurer Hockey and Minister Robb. Watch the video here.
See live event.
Business wants to invest, grow and create jobs. Governments can help by aligning policy to these goals and removing multilateral and domestic roadblocks. The G20 is the right forum to achieve the necessary actions to reach these objectives.
For this, the B20 recommends that there is a strong need of promoting structural flexibility, free movement across borders, consistent and smart regulations, ensuring integrity and credibility in commerce.
The B20 has developed twenty recommendations for action consistent with these principles that will promote economic growth and jobs, but to be effective they require collective agreement by the G20 for unilateral action by each member country. These recommendations could be found here.
Telefónica contributed to the taskforce on “Infrastructure & Investments”. This taskforce called on each nation to publish and deliver credible national infrastructure pipelines that had been rigorously assessed and prioritized by independent infrastructure authorities, while taking full advantage of private sector finance and expertise, but also underlined the need to count on consistent and effective regulations that foster investments in infrastructures.
The recommendations of this taskforce could be found here.
The recommendations of the B20, along with those from civil society (C20), labour organisations (L20), think tanks (T20) and young people (Y20), will inform the deliberations of ministers and G20 officials in the lead up to the Leaders Summit in Brisbane in mid-November.
