Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said all G20 finance chiefs had agreed that intervention and policies were needed to correct the ongoing food supply disruption to prevent a deeper crisis.

“Trade [restrictions] and protectionism should be eliminated in order for us to be able to address or create or facilitate the flow of food [supplies] from the production side [...] to the country that needs it,” Sri Mulyani said at press briefing on Saturday, after closing the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) Meeting in Bali.

Read also: G20 finance chiefs urged to focus on global recovery goals; formal communique unlikely

The third FMCBG meeting came after a raucous second round in Washington, D.C., that saw finance ministers walk out, led by the United States, in protest over Russia’s presence at the forum.

Amid a backdrop of the worsening food and energy crises and recession fears among both developed and developing countries, the FMCBG meeting in Bali saw more gestures toward collaboration among ministers and zero walkouts.

The chorus of condemnation against Russia, however, remains loud within the multilateral forum. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland have stated that Russia “has no place” at the meetings and that the two countries would hold Moscow responsible for “war crimes” in Ukraine.

The US proposed during the Bali meeting to put a price cap on Russian oil, but host Indonesia decline to discuss the matter, suggesting that the US to engage in bilateral talks instead.

“I think we all agree that this G20 meeting under Indonesia’s 2022 presidency has been under a very challenging and difficult situation because of the geopolitical tension,” said Sri Mulyani.

In a food security seminar on Friday that was attended by all ministers including Yellen, the G20 members agreed to set up a joint forum of finance and agriculture ministers to address the issue of food and fertilizer supplies. A similar forum for finance and health ministers has been set up to work on pandemic preparedness.

Read also: G20 host Indonesia calls for joint ministerial forum to fight food crisis

At the end of the two-day Bali meeting, which saw the Russian and Ukrainian finance ministers attend virtually, Indonesia issued a chair summary document consisting of 14 paragraphs.

Some member countries have expressed their disagreement over the first two paragraphs on the Russia-Ukraine war and the global food crisis it had precipitated.

The first paragraph explicitly mentions that Russia’s war against Ukraine had resulted in a major setback and slowdown in the global economic recovery and issues a call to end it. The second paragraph expresses an urgent need to tackle the alarming global food and energy crises, saying that the former had been exacerbated by concerns over fertilizer availability.

Analysts said the delegates’ failure to agree on issuing a communiqué reflected the weakness of the once-mighty economic grouping.

"We are in a rudderless moment in the world economy, with the G20 paralyzed by Putin's war and the G7 unable to lead on global public goods," said Kevin Gallagher, the director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, as quoted by Reuters.

This year is not the first time that the G20 has failed to produce a communiqué. Italy’s G20 presidency last year also failed to agree to a communiqué on climate goals.

The two most contested points concerned phasing out coal power and the wording of the 1.5- to 2-degrees Celsius limit on the global temperature increase. China, Russia and India were among the toughest to negotiate with over these issues.

Outside the tensions surrounding the Ukraine war, this year’s G20 has produced some deliverables. The finance and health ministers’ forum has set up a financial intermediary fund (FIF) for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) totaling US$1.28 billion in funding commitments from donor countries.

The forum also saw pledges amounting to $73 billion through the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) facility of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as the establishment of the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) to help vulnerable countries tackle macroeconomic challenges stemming from pandemics and climate change.

G20 members are also working to push for domestic legislation on the 15 percent global minimum tax as well as the implementation of taxing rights on multiple market jurisdictions.

Bank Indonesia Governor Perry Warjiyo said on Saturday that the third FMCBG meeting had also agreed there was an urgent need to enhance supervision and regulation of crypto assets, including its risks to financial stability, through international cooperation under a regulatory and supervisory framework.

“Central banks will monitor the risk of increasing volatility and negative spillovers from capital outflows, including by improving coordination through many integrated frameworks available to better formulate a proper policy mix,” he said.