Establish G20 Secretariat in India

At the recently concluded G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina PM Narendra Modi has requested to hold 2022 Summit in India, by superseding Italy’s turn to host the summit . It is welcome to know that G20 summit involving some of European Union, American, Arabic and Asian countries represented by their Heads of Nations and Finance Ministers will be held during the 75th Independence celebrations of India.

India has of late has not conducted any major event involving heads of various powerful nations with the exception of SAARC, ASEAN ,BRICS, BIMSEC and other African region based summits, apart from conducting international sporting events like Commonwealth Games.

The G20 summit was conceptualised in 1999 as an outcome of G7 meet in 1999, where nations converged to find a common ground to the global economy, trade, climate change, agriculture and energy. However as G20 is yet to have a permanent staff with a Secretariat, it is high time to draw a resolution to establish a permanent secretariat at least by the next summit in 2019 in Osaka, Japan. It also a known fact that France and South Korea are keen to establish the permanent secretariat at Paris and Seoul respectively.

Further as India is looked up to as an opportunity to various economic and trade ties by many nations including G20, India now too needs to make an honest attempt to establish a permanent secretariat based in New Delhi. As such no major international organisations are functioning as a global headquarter office based in India, with the exception of either a Country Office or Representative office in India . The officials at PMO and the Ministry of External Affairs should now look into this as an opportunity to form a consensus within G20 nations- to establish a permanent secretariat in New Delhi atleast by 2022 summit hosted by India.

- Varun Dambal, Bengaluru