Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked members of the G20 group of nations – an association of the world’s biggest economies which includes India – to push harder on reforms in order to step up growth.

Addressing over 400 business leaders from the G20 nations in Sydney at the B20 meeting, Abbott stressed that monetary policies needed to revert to “normal”, and that it was time to wind down the “extraordinary” monetary measures put in place by most countries after the 2008 global financial crisis.

The G20 had agreed in February this year to boost growth in their economies – which together account for more than 85 per cent of the world’s GDP – by 2 per cent more than the forecast average, over the next five years.

But Abbott – Australia is the president of the G20 this year and will host the G20 heads of government summit later this year -- lamented that the growth strategies put in place by member nations so far will only be able to deliver a less than 1 per cent boost to growth – under half the targeted level – over the timeframe.

Abbott, who leads a conservative government in Australia which returned to power a few months ago, has been strongly pushing a more conservative approach to monetary policy, and better financial discipline. He said his government is targeting to “return the budget to balance” within four years in Australia and has been pushing the same agenda on other G20 members.

But he said for change to happen, it “needs a constituency” and called on the assembled business leaders to be “the constituency for change” with their governments.

Invest in Australia

He also made a fairly unsubtle pitch to the B20 leaders to invest in Australia, citing the country’s growing economy – Australia has had 22 years of positive growth and was the only developed economy not to shrink during the financial crisis – and ease of doing business as advantages. Australia has committed to reducing red tape and ‘green tape’ – environmental and other non-financial regulations – by 20 per cent over seven years. This year alone, Abbott said, his government had managed to axe over 50,000 pages of “unnecessary” laws and regulations.

He also made a strong pitch for further opening up of world trade, asserting that “no country has ever taxed or subsidised its way to prosperity.”

Trade faciliation support program

In a related development, the World Bank on Thursday launched a new programme which will help developing countries reduce costs and improve speed and efficiency of trade at their borders by simplifying their customs procedures.

The Trade Facilitation Support Program, supported by Australia, the European Union, the United States, Canada, Norway and Switzerland, will make $30 million available in assistance for developing countries to help them devise and implement large scale reform programmes, leading to increased trade, investments, and job opportunities.

Speaking in Sydney, ahead of the weekend’s G20 Trade Ministers’ meeting, Anabel Gonzalez, World Bank Group Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice Senior Director, said the new global programme would focus on overcoming existing bottlenecks to trade, so providing predictability, simplicity, transparency and uniformity for traders.

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