HILARY JOFFE: SA is due to host the G20, but will we be ready?
The forum lasts all year and involves well over 100 meetings at all levels
When SA hosted the world’s leading finance ministers and central bank governors at the Group of 20 (G20) meeting near Hermanus in late 2007, one of those finance ministers turned out to be a Christian Scientist who insisted on a Christian Science ambulance being on standby and refused to get the required yellow fever vaccination. The minor diplomatic tensions were soon resolved.
The meeting was a success, even though the cracks in the global financial system were starting to show. Hermanus proved to be the last G20 in its original form. It had come together in the wake of the 1998 emerging markets crisis as a forum for the finance ministers and central bank governors of the world’s most systemically important economies. It was reshaped in the midst of the 2008 global financial crisis as a forum led by G20 heads of government, who came together to stabilise the world economy and its financial system...
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