In 2009, the telenovela Caminho das Índias received Brazil’s first International Emmy award. The hit present depicted Indian and Brazilian characters coming to phrases with social and financial upheaval within the quickly modernizing nations within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s. The similar 12 months, leaders of Brazil and India met their counterparts from Russia and China within the first summit of the BRIC grouping in Yekaterinburg, Russia. At its inception, the founders of the BRIC grouping, who added South Africa the next 12 months to grow to be the BRICS, wished to articulate a shared imaginative and prescient of financial priorities for rising markets. 

Fast ahead fifteen years and Brazil and India proceed to share views on key world points. For the primary time since its inception in 1999, the Group of Twenty (G20) may have 4 consecutive rising economic system presidencies (Indonesia in 2022, India in 2023, Brazil this 12 months, and South Africa in 2025). As G20 overseas ministers kick off their assembly in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, anticipate to see the shared views of India and Brazil mirrored in a excessive diploma of continuity between their G20 agendas.

The members of the G20 collectively account for greater than 80 p.c of world gross home product, three-quarters of world commerce, and two-thirds of the world’s inhabitants. Moreover, the discussion board stays the world’s premium platform for coordinating worldwide coverage. Over the following 12 months, the Atlantic Council’s G20 programming and research will monitor how Brazil leads this group in addressing 4 key areas (introduced under) and can work to advertise continuity with South Africa’s presidency in 2025 and the United States’ in 2026.

Food safety and starvation elimination

Both New Delhi and Brasília have sought to spotlight the wants of rising markets and growing economies via their agenda-setting function on the G20. Perhaps no want stands out as urgently and pervasively as meals insecurity. According to the World Food Programme, 783 million people worldwide confronted continual starvation in 2023, and most are in rising markets and growing economies.

Under the Indian G20 presidency, the New Delhi Declaration was adopted by all members on the leaders’ summit. Among different provisions, it dedicated members to cooperate on agriculture analysis, entry to fertilizers, capacity-building, and market transparency to foster meals safety amongst susceptible populations. In explicit, India emphasized the export and provision of millets, aligning with the “International Year of Millets” initiated by the United Nations General Assembly. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was even nominated for a Grammy award for his look in a tune titled “Abundance in Millets.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has doubled down on the social dimension of improvement, with a concentrate on combating poverty, inequality, and starvation. Food safety is entrance and middle in his home and overseas coverage. As president of the G20, he has announced Brasília’s intention to launch a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty on the leaders’ summit in November. Brazil is the world’s second-largest exporter of agriculture and is central to world provide chains—and specifically provide chains for emerging markets and developing economies. Expect to see Brazil leverage its weight in world markets to construct consensus on the trail ahead in addressing meals insecurity this 12 months.

Climate and improvement finance

On local weather and sustainable finance, Brazil’s G20 presidency seems poised to construct on the legacy of India’s, whereas providing notable improvements and customizations. The four priorities of 2024’s Sustainable Finance Working Group are illustrative of Brazil’s explicit pursuits and this G20’s general mandate of “Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet.” For instance, monetary devices for nature-based solutions are rightfully receiving better consideration than ever in Brazil, which shouldn’t be a shock in a rustic that incorporates two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest and 15-20 p.c of the world’s biodiversity.

Leveraging Brazil’s energetic participation in numerous worldwide monetary establishments, the Brazilian finance sherpas are additionally inserting a pointy technical concentrate on streamlined coordination amongst multilateral improvement banks and vertical funds. The troika of India-Brazil-South Africa G20 presidencies will press on with key Global South improvement financing priorities, equivalent to just transition plans and blended finance for adaptation (see Atlantic Council’s associated work on this here). In addition, Brazil has a novel alternative to bridge this 12 months’s G20 with the UN local weather change convention generally known as COP30, which it’ll host in Belem in 2025. Brazil can coordinate its presidencies of each platforms to spur continued progress in Belem on landmark accomplishments from latest COPs, together with the Loss and Damage Fund introduced throughout final 12 months’s COP28, held in Dubai.

Digital public infrastructure

Another space of continuity and compatibility between the G20 presidencies of India and Brazil is the supply of digital public infrastructure via funds, id, and different digital networks created by the state to digitize and improve the supply of public providers. Through Brazil’s Pix and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), for instance, each nations have seen super success in constructing digital funds ecosystems and growing digital and monetary connectivity. 

Through the funds working group, G20 member states set targets for funds modernization for central banks and multilateral establishments. These targets handle the price, transparency, and pace of world funds. In 2023, the price of retail funds to companies and people throughout nations exceeded the beforehand set 3 percent goal in 1 / 4 of jurisdictions around the globe. Similarly, the common price of remittances is more than twice the goal of three p.c. These metrics benchmark the G20’s progress and lay out the actions that member states nonetheless have to undertake to realize these targets by 2027 (for cross-border retail funds) and 2030 (for remittances). 

Both India and Brazil place themselves as leaders amongst rising markets within the provision of digital public infrastructure, and the G20 supplies a platform to showcase their digital fee and id fashions to the remainder of the world. While each nations view the adoption of those platforms as a mechanism to extend monetary inclusion and digital democratization, the broader adoption of digital public infrastructure may even current challenges. The G20 must come collectively to offer sturdy frameworks on information privateness, client safety, cybersecurity, competitors, and public-private collaboration. These are going to be ongoing discussions, to be mirrored in targets to return sooner or later. 

International monetary establishments

During its G20 presidency, India initiated a set of processes and frameworks via the New Delhi Declaration that dedicated to “pursue reforms for better, bigger, and more effective Multilateral Development Banks.” The Declaration additionally included provisions to enhance the multilateral improvement banks’ capital adequacy frameworks, which might yield a further 2 hundred billion {dollars} in lending headroom over the following decade. India’s efforts targeted on the standard and amount of financing offered by worldwide financing establishments and had been supported by the United States, the biggest shareholder on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Brazil is including to India’s priorities with a concentrate on governance and on augmenting the affect of rising markets over decision-making at worldwide financing establishments. However, divergent pursuits between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, and heightened geopolitical tensions between Russia and Western economies will make significant progress on financial world governance troublesome.

India realized as a lot late final 12 months in negotiations concerning a rise in IMF quotas—or the capital a rustic contributes to the establishment, which correlates with that nation’s voting energy. The United States had proposed a rise within the quotas that would go away voting shares unchanged—a proposal that drew criticism from China and different rising market economies who really feel underrepresented on the IMF. Ultimately, the nations agreed to the US-backed “equiproportional” enhance in quota sources that, in impact, pushed the problem of increasing voting energy within the IMF for rising markets to a future date.

Just just like the Indian G20 presidency, Brazil’s achievements on this space will seemingly be incremental but necessary. For instance, Brazil may advance progressive concepts for growing non-public finance partnerships and for making measurable enhancements in worldwide monetary establishments’s operations and improvement affect assessments. These increments will accumulate, significantly because the G20 presidency strikes in 2026 to the United States, by far the biggest shareholder of varied worldwide monetary establishments. Reform is a present precedence for the United States, as said by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the Atlantic Council in April 2022 and elsewhere, and the topic can be excessive on the agenda when G20 finance ministers meet subsequent in the course of the April IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC.

Mrugank Bhusari is assistant director on the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

Ananya Kumar is the affiliate director for digital currencies on the GeoEconomics Center.

Pepe Zhang is a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Valentina Sader is a deputy director on the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Further studying

Image: New Delhi, Sept 10 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi palms over the gavel of the G20 Presidency to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva throughout Session 3 of the G20 Summit, on the Bharat Mandapam, Pragati Maidan, in New Delhi on Sunday. (ANI Photo)