The G20 Summit

Why in news?

G20 summit is about to take place in Osaka Japan from June 27 to 29 where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also take part. The Ministry of External Affairs' spokesperson, Raveesh Kumar informed this to the media adding that the former Union Minister, Suresh Prabhu will play the role of India's Sherpa at the summit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Japan next week to attend the meeting. He along with this, will also take part in certain bilateral and plurilateral meetings. The talks will be based on certain grounds like WTO Reform, financial stability, black money and terrorism which are the present issues and topics of great concern throughout the globe. PM Modi will be participating this year in the summit for the sixth time.

G-20 has become a very important platform for such talks on global level because the countries that take part, constitute about 85 percent of the world's GDP and more than 50 percent of the world's living population land. Under such circumstances it would be interesting to see Modi's first meeting after his re-election with the US President Donald Trump.

What is a G20 Summit?

The G20 Summit, formally known as the "Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy" is a meeting where leaders from 19 countries and European Union (EU) come together to discuss on international issues.

These 19 countries include:

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the United States and the European Union.

The main focus of this summit has always been on achieving highest possible global economic growth. However in recent times it has expanded it's field of discussion. Topics such as climate change, health, terrorism, migration of refugees etc have also started to be talked about in the summit.

The host country of the G20 Summit takes the charge as the leader for one year. Japan has got this chance in 2019 for the first time ever.

It was in November 2008 when this summit was organized for the first time in Washington D.C. as a response to the Global Financial Crisis 2008, which occurred with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. In 2008 it was decided that the summit would take place twice a year but in 2011 it was changed to once per year.

Now all eyes of not only India but other countries will be on the summit of 2019 and role of PM Narendra Modi in it.