DAVOS
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday that Turkey will work towards making the G20 a more inclusive platform and decreasing world unemployment.
Turkey's priority as the G20 president has three dimensions, "inclusiveness, implementation and investment," he told a special session titled "Turkey's Vision for the G20" in the Swiss city of Davos.
He made his comments at the 2015 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Turkey has been the 2015 president of the G20 since it took over the post from Australia on Dec. 1, 2014.
"In the last 25 years one of the most successful platforms or organizations from the perspective of inclusiveness and effectiveness has been the G20," he said.
He stated that the G20 originally emerged as a crisis management mechanism regarding the financial sector, but now also serves as an effective policy formation and consultation platform.
The Turkish premier stressed that Turkey will make efforts to enhance the participatory process between advanced and emerging countries during its 2015 term presidency.
"One of the main targets will be how to make G20 processes, meetings and decisions more inclusive and how to have access to non-G20 countries like LIDCs, or low income developing countries," he said.
Davutoglu said they will make references to the UN post-2015 development agenda and will make special efforts with regards to the basic necessities of LIDCs, such as food security and nutrition frameworks.
Turkey will be the first president to implement the G20 food security and nutrition framework, he announced.
"We are planning to have a G20 agricultural ministerial meeting to discuss how to limit and minimize waste of food and how we can guarantee the basic needs of LIDCs," he said.
The prime minister also touched upon the issues of inequality and unemployment, which he said are becoming a structural long-term problem that could affect political stability.
Through inclusiveness Turkey aims to reduce the gap between participation rates of men and women in the labor force by 25 percent by 2025, he said.
Davutoglu stressed that they want increased female participation in all fields of the economy, as well as in daily life.
"If we reach this target by 2025, it will bring more than 100 million women into the labor force and significantly contribute to our efforts to reduce unemployment and inequality," he added.
He noted that eradicating inequality is vital for social cohesion, social peace and economic recovery.
The prime minister said they will also make special efforts with regards to youth unemployment, "which is a real risk for many countries."
"If the young generation is unemployed, you can expect... tension, risks and confrontational attitudes," he said.
As for the figures, he said the world is now facing around 75 million unemployed young people.
Integrating small and medium-sized enterprises into the global economy is one of the solutions he proposed to control unemployment.
Davutoglu said Turkey's second priority as G20 president will be to better enable the implementation of decisions taken during G20 meetings.
"We will be looking to have follow-up mechanisms on how to implement decisions taken by the G20," he said.
He described the basis to realize this objective as trust and confidence in the structures of the G20 platform.
"If fully implemented, growth strategies will lift G20 GDP by 2.1 percent by 2018, and accordingly raise non-G20 GDP by 0.5 percent," he added.
The Turkish premier said the third pillar of their G20 presidency efforts will be investment, which he deemed the basic force for economic growth.
"We have to find alternative channels of financing infrastructure investment, like Islamic financing and public private partnerships, to increase the investment level," he said.
Davutoglu also pointed out the significance of trade and energy regarding investment, saying that G20 countries represent 76 percent of world trade transactions.
"Trade is important for growth. We need to have an open and functioning multi-lateral trading system," he said.
As for energy, he said G20 countries are the main consumers, producers and transit countries in the energy sector.
"Our objectives will be enhancing energy access with more investment in energy and much better framework of international policy," he said.
Davutoglu said that $6.6 trillion worth of energy investment is required by 2040.
