G-8's dominance faces challenge from G-5

Leaders of developing countries confronted advanced nations with a demand for a greater role in the management of the global economy, signaling the drift in power away from the financially distressed West.

Five countries with almost half the world’s population — China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa — challenged the hegemony of the US dollar, balked at the industrial world’s strategy for fighting climate change and sought more clout in global markets and institutions.

The encounter ending on Friday in L’Aquila, Italy at the annual Group of Eight summit dramatised the ascendance of emerging nations — led by China — as the worst economic calamity since World War II batters the US and its European allies.

“Everyone was of the opinion that the G-8 isn’t any longer the most ideal structure for dealing with the governance of the world economy,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters after chairing the session.

Leaders of the G-5 — representing 3 billion people with gross domestic product of $7 trillion — appeared as a united front for a fifth time at the summit of the G-8, the advanced world’s forum founded in 1975. “What is happening here is simply the acknowledgment of a reality,” Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Be it the fight against poverty, climate change, trade — whatever you want that is global in nature — you need those large emerging economies.”