President Felipe Calderón Proposes Actions for Coping with World Crisis at G-20 Summit

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The agreements made by the leaders are an excellent starting point for dealing with the prevailing economic situation, he declared.

Washington D.C. In order to cope with the situation of the global economy, at the G-20 Summit, President Felipe Calderón proposed containing the financial crisis, adopting contracyclical economic policies in a coordinated fashion, reforming national and international financial institutions and preventing the new era of protectionism.
During his participation in the Summit, he declared that the crisis did not originate in developing countries. On the contrary, he declared, the global economy’s dynamism has only been sustained by the vitality of emerging economies.
In a press statement at the end of the meeting, the President explained that the Declaration and Plan of Action signed by the G-20 leaders contain actions to stabilize financial markets and reactivate economic activity, in addition to establishing a reform plan to correct the financial systems and redefine the architecture of international financial organizations.
The Plan of Action, he explained, consists of approximately 50 measures that must be implemented over the next 100 days and in the medium term. He also declared that before April 30 2009, the G-20 leaders will meet up again to follow up the implementation of these agreements.

“We obviously cannot act in an isolated to deal with a crisis of this scope, which requires a firm, timely, global response, stated President Calderón.
He considered that these agreements, the Declaration and the Plan of Action are an excellent starting point, not only for coping with the prevailing economic situations but also for redesigning and transforming the international financial system in the medium and long term.
In this respect, President Felipe Calderón stated that “Many measures that developed countries are going to begin to take to force the capitalization of their banking system were implemented by Mexico in the past.”
He pointed out that in recent years, Mexico took solid preventive measures to capitalize banks, which averted a financial crisis and prevented the collapse of the world’s major corporations from affecting the Mexican system.
In this respect, he said, “Naturally, what some people call moving onto the Basle III stage, these preventive measures will be reviewed again, but the fact that there has not be a run on the financial system, the fact that credit has not come to an abrupt halt in Mexico, the fact that government has not had to intervene to use enormous sums of money to capitalize, as is being done in the United States, for example, means that these preventive measures had largely been implemented.”