BRISBANE, November 16, 2014 – World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim today released the following statement on the G20 Leaders’ Communique:
“With the global economy struggling with an uneven recovery, we welcome G20 Leaders’ commitment to raising growth and delivering quality jobs.
Higher and more inclusive growth is essential if we are to significantly cut poverty and reduce inequality. The G20 commitments promise a much needed boost to G20 countries and beyond.
G20 Leaders have rightly identified investment in infrastructure as crucial to lifting growth, creating jobs and tackling poverty. We welcome support by G20 Leaders for the World Bank Group’s Global Infrastructure Facility, designed to build a global pipeline of infrastructure investments that can draw in new sources of finance, such as institutional investors.
We also welcome the launch of the G20 Global infrastructure Initiative and Hub, which will complement our work. We look forward to working with them. Meeting the enormous need for infrastructure in emerging and developing economies is a big lift and the support of the G20 on this critical agenda is important.
We also welcome the G20 Leaders’ support for strong and effective action to address climate change, including mobilizing funding for the Green Climate Fund.
In the last year, the World Bank Group has contributed to G20 work on: assessments of G20 member growth strategies, labor and employment; tax; anti-corruption; financial inclusion; measuring and reducing the costs of remittance transfers; financial regulation; food security; and ways to mitigate the impact of removing inefficient fossil fuel subsidies on poor people.
We welcome the progress made this year. We thank Australia for hosting the G20 this year and look forward to working with Turkey in the coming year. ”
