TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Risks to poor countries would be catastrophic if no consensus made: Sri Mulyani
In her opening remarks to the meeting, Sri Mulyani said Indonesia would be an honest broker and find creative solutions to overcome the "triple threat" of surging commodity prices, global inflation and war.
Change Size
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani (on screen) delivers her opening speech during the G20 Finance Ministers Meeting in Nusa Dua, Bali, on July 15, 2022.
(AFP/Nyoman Budhiana)
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Friday failure by G20 finance chiefs meeting in Bali to reach consensus could be catastrophic for low-income countries amid soaring food and energy prices exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
In her opening remarks to the meeting, Sri Mulyani said Indonesia would be an honest broker and find creative solutions to overcome the "triple threat" of surging commodity prices, global inflation and war.
"We are acutely aware that the cost of our failure to work together is more than we can afford. The humanitarian consequences for the world, and especially for many low income countries would be catastrophic," she said.
Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen condemned Russia's "brutal and unjust war" in Ukraine and said Russian finance officials taking part in a G20 meeting in Bali shared responsibility for the "horrific consequences" of the war.
Yellen, speaking at the opening session of the gathering of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in Bali, welcomed Ukraine's finance minister and blamed the negative spillovers of the war "solely" on Russia, a Treasury official said.
Russian Deputy Finance Minister Timur Maksimov was in Bali for the meetings, while Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was participating virtually when Yellen spoke, a source familiar with the matter said.
Yellen told reporters on Thursday that Russian officials had no place at this week's meeting of the Group of 20 major economies, and called on the global community to hold Russia accountable for the war and its dramatic impact on energy prices and rising food insecurity.
The US finance chief urged G20 members to scale up and accelerate financial assistance to help Ukraine, whose finance minister Serhiy Marchenko was present at the opening session.
"I condemn Russia’s brutal and unjust war in the strongest possible terms," Yellen said. "By starting this war, Russia is solely responsible for negative spillovers to the global economy, particularly higher commodity prices."
She said Russian officials participating in the meeting were "adding to the horrific consequences of this war through their continued support of the Putin regime."
"You share responsibility for the innocent lives lost and the ongoing human and economic toll that the war is causing around the world," she said, addressing the Russian officials.
Yellen is pushing hard for other countries to back a proposed cap on the price of Russian oil to help lower energy prices and maintain global oil flows after European and potentially British and US sanctions on the transport of Russian oil take effect at the end of the year.
Failing to adopt such measures, she told reporters on Thursday, would shut in a significant amount of Russian oil and drive global oil prices higher.
It was not immediately clear if Western officials would leave the room when Russian officials spoke, as they did in Washington during the last meeting of G20 finance officials.
Also on Friday, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told Russian officials at the Bali meeting that she held them personally responsible for "war crimes" committed during Russia's war in Ukraine, a Western official told Reuters.
Freeland directly addressed the Russian delegation: "It is not only generals who commit war crimes, it is the economic technocrats who allow the war to happen and to continue," the official said.
Freeland, whose maternal grandparents were born in Ukraine, told the opening G20 session that the war was the "single biggest threat to the global economy right now," the official said.
