Prime Minister Modi to address B20 Summit on Sunday

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday will address the B20 Summit India 2023, which will be attended by over 1,700 business leaders and experts from across the world.

The three-day B20 Summit starts on Friday. Business 20 or B20 is one of the G20 forums representing the global business community, which was set up in 2010. The G20 Summit will be held next month. The theme of B20 is focused on ensuring responsible, accelerated, innovative, sustainable and equitable access to all businesses, B20 India Chair N Chandrasekaran told reporters on Thursday.

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“The nine themes, seven task forces and two action councils all address what the world economy, society and Global South needs,” he said, adding that the task force is centred around digital transition and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on scale, which can benefit society. Chandrasekaran, Executive Chairman of Tata Sons, said India is witnessing a growth momentum at a time when the world is facing low growth. “We are the fifth largest economy, and we have a lot of things going for us. Just not in terms of economic growth but in terms of infrastructure as well,” he said.

Further, he said the global transition is placing India uniquely in several domains such as energy transition, digital transformation and AI, and supply chain resilience due to the current geopolitical situation. He said since taking over the mantle of B20 from Indonesia in December last year, B20 India worked with business leaders from all G20+ countries through seven task forces and two action councils. He commended the time commitment of global business leaders, including members of the B20 India international advocacy caucus, for building consensus-based, implementable and actionable policy actions.

B20, being organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), will also be attended by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Global business leaders scheduled to participate in the summit include Brad Smith, President and Vice Chairman of Microsoft; Michael Miebach, Chief Executive Officer of Mastercard and Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Chairman and CEO of UAE-based DP World Group; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP and Mark E Tucker, Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings Plc are also scheduled to attend the event.

Other participants include Allen Blue, Co-Founder of LinkedIn; Abdulrahman Al Fageeh-Al, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s SABIC and Johnny C Taylor, Jr, President and CEO of SHRM. The B20 presidency will be handed over to Brazil at the end of the summit on Sunday. In all, 54 recommendations and more than 170 policy actions will be released with the unveiling of the B20 India communique. Several senior ministers from G20 countries would also address delegates during the summit.

Chandrajit Banerjee, Head of B20 India Secretariat and the CII Director General, said the summit is the culmination of rigorous activities that have transpired over the past ten months, laying the groundwork for impactful discussions and formulation of actionable policy recommendations for the consideration of the G20.