MOSCOW, September 16 (RIA Novosti) - The Group of 20 will not soften its goal of increasing GDP growth by an additional 2 percent, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said at the Bloomberg summit in Sydney on Tuesday.
"You've got to be ambitious … there's been a very large number of policy initiatives delivered to us by countries. We are not too far away from the 2 percent," Hockey said.
The G20 meeting will take place on the weekend of September 20-21 in Cairns, Australia and will be hosted by Hockey.
The treasurer also noted that complacency is the biggest threat to the growth target. "Fiscal policy isn't going to deliver, monetary policy is not going to deliver what we need over the medium term. It's only through reform, and it has to be hard reform." he said.
In the second quarter of 2014, the GDP of G20 countries increased by 0.8 percent compared to the previous three months, when the growth was 0.6 percent, preliminary estimates of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed. However, the goal of increasing the GDP of the group's members by an additional 2 percent in five years is threatened by geopolitical risks, such as the crises in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
The G20 is a forum for the governments and treasurers of the world's 20 major economies. The members include 19 countries – Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States and the European Union. The group represents 85 percent of gross world product.
