Global crisis, energy security & climate change likely to dominate G-8 meet

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: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with senior officials, left on Tuesday for Italy to attend the G-8 and G-5 Outreach summit. The global financial meltdown, energy security and climate change are some of the core issues that will be focused on in the summit. The three-day meeting in the Italian town of L’Aquila will bring together leaders of the world’s most powerful and industrialised nations—US, Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, Germany and Russia— along with and several African nations. The summit is being hosted by Italy , as it currently holds the presidency of the G-8. The G-8, founded in 1975, comprises—the world’s most industrialised and wealthy states—the US , Britain , Canada , Japan , Italy , Germany , France and Russia.

In a statement before his departure, Singh said, “The slowdown in the advanced economies has affected our exports, strengthened protectionist sentiments and impacted credit and capital flows. We would, therefore, like to see a concerted and well-coordinated global response to address systemic failures and to stimulate the economy.”

“The global financial and economic slowdown that we are witnessing is particularly detrimental for the development objectives of developing countries such as India . This has not been a crisis of our making, but we have had to bear its consequences,” he added.

India , which is part of the G-5, along with China , Mexico (which is chairing the meeting), South Africa and Brazil , will hold parallel meetings and joint discussions to deliberate on the reasons for the global economic crisis and the measures to be adopted by international organisations to ensure the growth of world economy. While the G-8 will have ‘outreach’ meetings with the G-5, the emerging G-5 countries will have a standalone meeting as well.