By Amy Musgrave
President Cyril Ramaphosa has launched a G20 experts taskforce to examine global wealth inequality and its impact on growth, poverty and multilateralism. It is the first initiative of its kind for the G20.
The six-member taskforce, chaired by Nobel Economics Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, will present its findings to G20 leaders in Johannesburg in November.
The Presidency said on Thursday that the extraordinary committee was being launched amid macroeconomic fears that global wealth and income inequality, which was already very high, was set to sharply accelerate.
It said recent analysis showed that the world’s richest 1% have increased their wealth by more than US$33.9 trillion in real terms since 2015, which was more than enough to eliminate annual global poverty 22 times over.
“People across the world know how extreme inequality undermines their dignity and chance for a better future. They saw the brutal unfairness of vaccine apartheid, where millions in the Global South were denied the vaccines to save them,” Ramaphosa said in a statement.
“They see the impacts of rising food and energy prices, of debt, of trade wars, all driving this growing gap between the rich and the rest of the world, undermining progress and economic dynamism. A new oligarchy in our global economy is becoming apparent.”
He said the initiative would target global wealth inequality and offer a practical way forward.
The six independent experts are Prof. Stiglitz (USA), Dr Adriana E. Abdenur (Brazil), Winnie Byanyima (Uganda), Prof. Jayati Ghosh (India), Prof. Imraan Valodia (South Africa) and Dr Wanga Zembe-Mkabile (South Africa).
They will report on the state of wealth and income inequality, their impacts on growth, poverty and multilateralism, and present a menu of effective solutions for leaders.
Stiglitz said in the same statement that inequality has widened to extremes that threatened democracy itself and should concern everyone.
“Inequality was always a choice – and G20 nations have the power to choose a different path, on a range of economic and social policies. I am grateful to President Ramaphosa for placing inequality as central to the G20 agenda,” he said.
“The burgeoning body of scholarship on the causes of, and ways of reducing inequality, can help us to redress the great divide that has grown enormously in recent years.
“Our task must now be to translate the evidence and public’s palpable anger at the great divide into sound, practical and transformative policy proposals for G20 leaders.”
The G20 “Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality” will be located in the G20 Sherpa’s Office in the International Relations and Cooperation Department.
INSIDE POLITICS