ICC G20 Business Scorecard 1st Edition (June 2012)

The purpose of the Scorecard is to generate a balanced and reliable measurement of the G20’s performance in response to business recommendations that have been put forward to Heads of Government. The listing of recommendations and responses by category, along with the indicative scoring, is intended to provide an effective way to concentrate attention on the need to track performance and monitor progress over time.

The results of the Scorecard serve three purposes:

• Government authorities with better information pon how their actions are interpreted by the business community are better able to establish priorities, honour commitments, gauge their own progress over time and identify deficiencies that deserve greater attention.
• Business leaders with better information on whether the G20 has recognized business input and how it has carried through on specific business recommendations are better able to tailor forthcoming recommendations and engagement with the G20—and with national governments and intergovernmental organizations tasked with implementing G20 commitments.
• Government and business leaders with a crisp and tangible summary of accomplishments and shortcomings can more effectively chart a roadmap for improvement and next steps and more efficiently deploy actions and resource

The overall G20 score across 54 business recommendations1 in the four policy groups evaluated here is Incomplete.

This score is perhaps somewhat intuitive given the protracted nature of global policymaking and the limited time for appreciation of and response to business contributions into the process.

As an overall average, this score masks the outlying high scores that the G20 has achieved by policy area such as encouraging the favourable treatment of trade finance, promoting energy efficiency and advancing the climate change agenda, reinforcing global anti-corruption mechanisms and shepherding the production of tangible tools to create enabling SME policy environments. However, this works both ways, concealing 8 “insufficient” scores at the level of policy areas.

By definition, the ICC G20 Scorecard is “a policy tool to identify deficiencies that merit greater attention.” In this light, the overall score reveals that marginal new achievements in Financing for Growth & Development (e.g., promoting the value of Intellectual Property) and in Green Growth (e.g., promoting free trade in environmental goods and services) could result in a score upgrade. Likewise, G20 advances to break the stalemate in WTO negotiations or to build a multilateral framework for investment would be reflected in a significantly higher score.

In summary, the overall score suggests that the G20 is responding to the calls of business. Still, additional time, a more comprehensive work program, and greater global cooperation are necessary to address considerable remaining challenges.

Finally, while a scoring system may be seen as a criticism, ICC is not critical of the G20. On the contrary, ICC recognizes and appreciates the G20’s significant achievements in guiding the global economy out of the recent economic crisis.