G20 summit's Seoul Development Consensus: please comment
UPDATE: OK I give up, I'll be the bad guy again (see end of post) I present selections of the text of the Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth without comment, inviting instead the readers to comment:
Be economic-growth oriented and consistent with the G20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth
Prioritize actions that tackle global or regional systemic issues
Differentiate, yet complement existing development efforts, avoiding duplication
Focus on feasible, practical and accountable measures to address clearly articulated problems
In close consultation with our developing country and LIC partners, as well as relevant international and regional organizations with development expertise, we have also identified nine areas, or “key pillars,” where we believe action and reform are most critical to ensure inclusive and sustainable economic growth and resilience in developing countries and LICs. These areas are: infrastructure, private investment and job creation, human resource development, trade, financial inclusion, growth with resilience, food security, domestic resource mobilization, and knowledge sharing. Creating optimal conditions for strong, sustainable and resilient economic growth in developing countries will require reform and transformation across each of these interlinked and mutually reinforcing key pillars.
UPDATE: OK I think I miscalculated, the Seoul Consensus is so completely free of substance that I couldn't get much comment (thanks to the valiant souls below who tried).
So it's my bitter lot in life to play the bad guy who says the obvious nasty things, like:
This summit set the lowest possible expectations on development, and then heroically failed to meet them.
Did it occur to any of the G20 sherpas that it would have been better to say, "we have nothing new on development" than to produce such vacuous babble then actually goes backward even from the dismally modest record of previous summits?
I guess the main puzzle is why the Koreans let themselves be insulted by having this Nothingness named after Seoul.