On Saturday, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said the group's growth strategies include 1,000 measures that will lift infrastructure investment, increase trade and competition, cut red tape and lift labor market participation.
“While we still face economic challenges in many parts of the world, I'm optimistic our 2 percent commitment will deliver the growth the world needs,” Hockey said.
But rights groups such as The Civil Society 20 group, or C20, wants assurances that the poor will benefit the most from the plans, estimating that the additional growth could lift 1 billion people out of poverty if it was poured into the poorest 20 percent of G-20 households.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said reducing inequality is a concern in nearly every developing country he has visited. He believes next year's G-20 host, Turkey, would focus more heavily on developing country issues.
Tax avoidance by big, multinational companies was expected to be high on the summit's agenda, particularly in light of the recent leak of documents suggesting that hundreds of big companies such as Pepsi and IKEA had organized tax-lowering deals with Luxembourg.
The tiny nation's European neighbors reacted angrily to the news, noting that they have had to impose harsh austerity measures on their own citizens to keep government budgets afloat following the global recession.
On Saturday, Jean-Claude Juncker, two weeks into his new job as European Commission president, faced tough questioning about his tax record as prime minister of Luxembourg for 18 years. During a press conference on the sidelines of the G-20, he was grilled about whether Luxembourg was guilty of “picking people's pockets” while he was the nation's leader, and asked whether he could be considered a credible representative of the European Union on the issue of tax avoidance, given his ties to Luxembourg. Juncker largely deflected the questions.
“Tax evasion sometimes happens because of the interaction between very divergent national tax rules in accordance with the law,” he said. “The result is a very low taxation of companies. This has to be avoided.”
At a separate press conference, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the G-20 to take more decisive action on tax evasion, noting that it had been discussed at multiple meetings, but failed to result in an agreement.
