Facing the gravest economic crisis in decades, world leaders have agreed to initiate "strong and significant actions" to stimulate economies, bring transparency in financial system, offer liquidity and reform financial institutions to beat the looming recession.
At a G-20 summit convened by US President George W Bush here yesterday, the leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, warned that "economic momentum is slowing substantially in major economies and the global outlook has weakened".
The meeting witnessed a shift in balance of power in which key emerging economies like India and China demanded a greater say.
"We need to ensure that any new architecture we design is genuinely multilateral with adequate representation from countries reflecting changes in economic realities," Singh said addressing the summit.
Singh asked world leaders to refrain from protectionism and pave way for multilateral regulatory supervision to avert the recurrence of crisis that has led to the world economy to the recession.
Virtually responding to Singh's demand against protectionism, Bush said: "We are committed to the people in the developing world... We have deep desire to reduce trade deficit." "... That attitude (protectionism) was rejected, thankfully. And as a matter of fact, not only rejected, there is a determined effort to see if we can't complete the modalities for Doha by the end of December," Bush said.