G20 finance chiefs to focus on fewer growth priorities

The world's 20 biggest developing and developed economies are meeting in Istanbul

World financial leaders are likely to agree on Tuesday to cut the number of actions they will take this year to boost growth to only 5-10 priorities per country to make it easier to check if they are being done, European officials said.

The world's 20 biggest developing and developed economies (G20) are meeting in Istanbul. They agreed last year to launch new measures to raise their collective gross domestic product growth by an additional 2 percentage points over the next five years above the level projected in 2013 and create millions of new jobs.

The pledge, called the Brisbane Action Plan, entails about 1,000 commitments. Since checking the implementation of such a number of steps would be very difficult, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors will agree to narrow them down to a handful this year, so they can be verified.

"We support the (Turkish G20) Presidency's intention that G20 members agree on a shortlist of measures with the highest growth impact on which further monitoring would focus ... taking due consideration to their individual and collective impact on global demand," a document prepared by European Union finance ministers for the G20 meeting said.

"We believe that in February, ministers should assess possible policy gaps and confirm the priorities for the growth strategies in 2015."

International institutions -- the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- will negotiate the priorities with individual countries, European G20 officials said.

"There is an agreement to narrow down the focus of the almost 1,000 commitments that have been taken, to 5-10 for each country in that interim period," one G20 official said.

"There will be a mandate from the ministers to carry out the peer review so that for the Antalya summit there will be a number of deliverables in terms of implementation," he said.

G20 leaders will meet in Antalya late this year.

Once the priority actions are decided, firm timetables should be set, according to the EU's finance ministers' document, obtained by Reuters.

"We would suggest that tentative implementation schedules are submitted already in April/May 2015 when members submit preliminary updates to their growth strategies," it said.