MD Statement G20 Leaders’ Summit
IMF News, November 23, 2025
Source details
- Canonical URL
- MD Statement G20 Leaders’ Summit
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Published: November 23, 2025
Publication details and setting
- Press Release No. 25/388
- November 23, 2025
- Delivered by International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
- Press officer: Rahim Kanani; Phone: +1 202 623-7100; Email: MEDIA@IMF.org
Opening and context
- First time G20 Leaders convened in Africa.
- A shared common theme at the Summit: the importance of building resilience amid sweeping policy shifts and deep transformations.
- Gratitude expressed to President Cyril Ramaphosa, the Government of South Africa, Minister Godongwana, and Governor Kganyago for leadership.
Global outlook: resilience through domestic reforms
Findings:
- "The global economy is doing better than we feared, but worse than we need."
- Resilience anchored in:
- a vibrant private sector;
- policies and institutions strengthened over the years, including through G20 coordination.
- Persistent problems:
- Growth "is stubbornly low – below pre-covid levels."
- Debt "is exceptionally high, stifling many countries, especially poorer ones."
- Drivers of heightened uncertainty and risks: geopolitical tensions, technological and demographic transformations, frequent severe climate events.
Policy imperatives:
- Governments must build confidence through credible, predictable, and sustainable actions.
- Restore policy buffers and preserve institutional strength.
- Address domestic imbalances to help reduce global imbalances.
- Implement structural reforms to harness private-sector potential and remove obsolete norms and regulations.
Policy cooperation
Findings and priorities:
- Acting at home must be complemented by acting together; policy cooperation is especially vital in a time of uncertainty.
- Trade must remain a powerful engine of growth, with enhanced rules reflecting the digital economy and global diversity.
- Mobilize fresh financing—public and private—for countries in need.
Debt action:
- "Action on debt must also be more decisive."
- Good progress under the Common Framework, but "more effort is needed to deliver faster and more predictable debt restructurings."
- Call for all creditors to "step forward when we can."
- IMF policy changes to "more actively help countries reduce debt."
Acknowledgement:
- Recognition of South Africa's leadership of the G20 and the October Declaration on Debt as providing "a clear road map for the future."
IMF role, resources, and programs
Key statistics and commitments:
- IMF is "enlarging our permanent quota resources by 50 percent."
- Providing "record high level of financing to our members – 50 programs, of which 21 are in sub-Saharan Africa."
- IMF support combines tailored policy advice and capacity development efforts.
Harnessing AI Opportunities for All
Findings:
- Slow productivity growth is the main reason for slow overall growth.
- "AI can deliver almost 1 percent additional economic growth."
- AI is "penetrating our societies extremely rapidly."
Labor market impacts (by country group):
- Advanced economies: potentially 60 percent of jobs affected.
- Emerging markets economies: 40 percent of jobs affected.
- Low-income countries: 26 percent of jobs affected.
- Characterization: "AI is like a tsunami hitting the labor market."
Readiness index (four dimensions):
- Digital infrastructure (example: India highlighted as a champion).
- Skills and flexible labor markets.
- Diffusion — the extent to which AI affects the rest of the economy.
- Ethics and regulation.
Assessment:
- Wide divergence across countries: few doing very well on all dimensions; many doing well on some; a group of mostly developing countries falling behind.
Policy recommendations:
- Domestic policies to rapidly improve AI readiness, especially:
- skills development;
- enabling infrastructure, especially power;
- taxation that favors innovation without favoring machines over people.
- Support development of a common platform for ethics and regulation, spearheaded by the United Nations.
- Assist developing countries to avoid falling behind to ensure AI becomes "a force of prosperity for all."
Concluding remarks
- Thanks to President Ramaphosa for leadership and hospitality.
Source: MD Statement G20 Leaders’ Summit, International Monetary Fund, November 23, 2025.