G20
G20 Business Summit – 2013 St. Petersburg Summary
The 20 June B20 Summit in St. Petersburg constituted the fourth consecutive year of CEO level business engagement in the G20 policy agenda – bringing together 400 business leaders under the Summit theme “B20-G20 Partnership for Growth and Jobs”.
The St. Petersburg Summit marked significant progress in the establishment and visibility of ICC as the indispensable international partner for business input into the G20 process. ICC’s delegation was active and vocal on behalf of world business.
Members of the ICC G20 Advisory Group were assigned prominent roles in the proceedings, presenting business recommendations, participating in plenary panel discussions, and speaking to the media.
ICC emphasised that business can and will play a crucial role in delivering economic growth and will be at the heart of sustained investment and innovation, creating growth and employment. During the Summit, ICC speakers called on the G20 to:
- Reject measures that restrict trade and investment;
- Commit to finalizing a WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement;
- Reiterate support for open cross-border investment as an essential contributor to growth, development and jobs and take steps to advance an international investment agenda;
- Ensure the availability, stability and sustainability of trade finance;
- Honour commitments for complete ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption) (UNCAC).
On trade, ICC was able to effectively advocate the need to secure a WTO Agreement on trade facilitation at the WTO Bali ministerial in December. This is one of the three main recommendations of our B20 Trade Task Force; it is also an essential component of ICC’s World Trade Agenda (WTA).
On investment and infrastructure, ICC stressed the need for policy-makers to:
- Identify and remove restrictions on the free flow of investments (inflows and outflows) to enable cross border investment activity by undertaking a systematic monitoring of framework conditions for private investment.
- Establish a multilateral high-standard investment framework utilizing the 2012 ICC Guidelines for International Investment as a template.
On anti-corruption, ICC presented a suite of ICC’s anti-corruption tools in the B20 Anti-Corruption and Transparency task force, notably the ICC Rules on Combating Corruption and the ICC Anti-Corruption Clause. These ICC products provide the basis for rigorous anti-corruption compliance programmes for companies of all sizes, including SMEs.
On innovation, ICC delivered numerous policy recommendations across the areas of energy, intellectual property rights, information technology and bio-technology.
In the absence of an official B20 press conference, ICC took an early lead in communicating business messages to the media, setting out the main business priorities for the B20 Summit.
Media engagements included live CNBC broadcast interviews and one-one-one interviews with print and web-based journalists.
