Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati has met senior representatives of leading American companies in Washington, where he arrived to attend a G-20 meeting that was expected to be dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nebati and his delegation shared “information about the economic outlook of Turkey and the country’s investment potential in detail,” the minister said in a tweet early on Wednesday.
The meeting was organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the sidelines of the meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors, the first since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February.
Nebati’s meeting comes after U.S. officials and executives said an exodus from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine may drive American firms to switch to Turkey.
A wave of Western companies has limited, put on hold or exited business activities in Russia following a series of sanctions imposed on Moscow over its military campaign.
Finance officials from the world’s richest countries gathered in Washington to address global challenges like rising debt and a possible food crisis – if they can overcome boiling tensions over the war in Ukraine.
Western nations have retaliated for the bloody incursion with sanctions meant to harm Russia’s economy and turn it into a pariah state.
Nebati said discussions in the G-20 Emerging Market Economies meeting focused on “the economic effects of geopolitical shocks, high commodity, food and energy prices as well as global financial conditions.”
“We emphasized the importance of joint efforts and global cooperation against vulnerabilities,” he said.
Nebati also said they reiterated the suggestion of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to form a working group within the G-20 for a systematic perspective on migration and forced displacement.
Chaired by Indonesia this year, the G-20 includes major economies like the United States, China, India, Brazil, Japan, Turkey and several other countries in Europe.
Western nations were reported to stage coordinated walk-outs and other diplomatic snubs to protest at Wednesday's meeting.
While some in Western capitals argue that Russia's actions should mean it is excluded from global meetings altogether, that is not a view shared by others, including notably China and Indonesia.
Moscow confirmed on Tuesday that Finance Minister Anton Siluanov would lead Russia's delegation at the talks despite repeated protestations by Western diplomats that they could not go ahead as usual during a war in which thousands of civilians have died in bombardments by Russian troops.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen planned to avoid G-20 sessions joined by Russian officials on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings.
But Yellen was to attend an opening session on the Ukraine war regardless of Russian participation, a U.S. Treasury official said.
The divisions widened by the Ukraine war raise questions over the G-20’s future as the world's premier economic policy forum.
Conceived as a platform for the biggest, wealthy and developing economies to cooperate on recovery efforts during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the G-20 has since broached everything from global tax reform to pandemic debt relief and the fight against climate change, with a patchy record of success.
“The G-20 is at risk of unraveling and this week is incredibly important,” said Josh Lipsky, director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former IMF adviser.
Should Western democracies allow the group to wither in favor of the G-7 or other groupings, it would cede significant economic influence to China, Lipsky said.
“Russia can align with China and I think that’s a good outcome from Russia’s perspective and actually gives them more influence than they have in a body like the G-20,” he said.
Both the French and the German officials said there would be no agreed communique at the end of the meeting, which had been originally due to discuss the state of the global economy and coordinating vaccines and other pandemic efforts.
The U.S. and China have long traded accusations of protectionism, while the fact that world trade is growing more slowly than the global economy as a whole has prompted questions about the future of globalization.
After the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the global economy is facing a new shock caused by Russia's military campaign.
The war has sent world food and energy prices spiraling and caused the IMF to lower the global growth outlook for this year.
The 190-country lender on Tuesday slashed its forecast for global economic growth by nearly a full percentage point, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, and warning inflation was a “clear and present danger” for many countries.
