Sri Mulyani Indrawati: Signals from G20 meeting not very good

The weekend’s meeting of G20 finance chiefs was not “very good” and has caused uncertainty about policy coordination between the world’s top economies, Indonesia’s finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Monday.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s biggest economies, the Group of 20, met in the German spa town of Baden Baden at the weekend. Breaking a decade-long tradition, they made only a token reference to trade in a communique released on Saturday and they dropped a key pledge to keep global trade free and open.

“It was not a very good and encouraging meeting,” Indrawati said at an event in London. “The current meeting is more creating uncertainty about the global economy, about the policy and coordination across the major economies of the world.”

Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the event after her speech, the minister added: “Trade is a very important source of growth for many emerging markets. Trade is also contributing to poverty reduction in the last five decades.