At this time, responding to the pandemic and in order to accelerate a resilient, sustainable, and inclusive economic recovery, we need to promote policy coherence between trade, investment, and industryJakarta (ANTARA) - Second session of the Second Meeting of G20 Trade, Investment, and Industry Working Group (TIIWG) in Surakarta, Central Java, Wednesday, agreed to increase the country's capacity to respond to the pandemic to expedite global health recovery.
Director General of International Trade at the Ministry of Trade Djatmiko Bris Witjaksono, concurrently chairman of the TIIWG G20 Meeting, stated that the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge to global health today, so it is a priority issue that should be discussed during the session for sustainable economic growth.
"At this time, responding to the pandemic and in order to accelerate a resilient, sustainable, and inclusive economic recovery, we need to promote policy coherence between trade, investment, and industry," Witjaksono noted in a written statement here on Thursday.
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Indonesia, during this G20 Presidency, invites G20 members in an effort to discuss, identify, and ensure the availability of production, distribution, and technology transfer for safe, affordable, and equitable vaccines and other important related goods to accelerate sustainability and inclusive global economic recovery. This is in line with efforts to build a better global health architecture in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
According to Marc Bacchetta, a representative from the World Trade Organization (WTO), there is a tendency for even worse pandemics to occur in the future if it is based on cyclical data that has occurred in the past hundreds of years. This is due to uneven distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, given that there are differences in the level of technology and research and development between countries in the world.
"The WTO's TRIPs (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) decided that the countries, most in need of vaccines, would be prioritized. The document also calls for solidarity from other countries regarding equal distribution of vaccine availability. A concrete plan is needed to produce vaccines as collaboratively and as much as possible at the regional and multilateral level," Bacchetta noted in his presentation.
Some support was received from WTO members, including the Ministerial Declaration on WTO's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Preparedness for Future Pandemics, and Ministerial Decree concerning the Agreement on Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Related to Trade.
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G20 member countries, especially Indonesia, are optimistic that TIIWG would focus on recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that the global community currently faces.
A close link exists between inclusive investment and health, so sound cooperation between the government and citizens is expected to encourage better economic growth.
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The Second TIIWG G20 meeting will be followed by the third session held on Thursday by discussing priority issues, including Spurring Sustainable Investment to Accelerate Global Economic Recovery.
The series of trials at the Second TIIWG G20 Meeting lasted for two days and was divided into three trial sessions.
The first topic is the World Trade Organization (WTO) Reform. Meanwhile, the other two topics are Trade, Investment and Industry Response to Pandemic and Global Health Architecture as well as Spurring Sustainable Investment for Global Economic Recovery.
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Translator: Katriana
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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