WEF Davos Special Coverage: Global Leaders pledge collaboration for solutions to global crisis

Anand Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra is a Co-Chair of the annual meeting 2009. MBAUniverse.com presents highlights from this important global summit.
Government, business and civil society leaders are at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 in record numbers to discuss ways out of the worst financial crisis in eight decades. The meeting got underway on January 28 in Davos, Switzerland with addresses by world leaders like Russian Premier .

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation told the opening plenary of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 that his country will work with the US, Europe and other countries to resolve the global financial crisis. We cannot afford to be isolationist and egotistic, he said, promising that Russia will not resort to protectionism and erect trade barriers that will simply worsen the global financial crisis.

As governments pump billions of dollars into financial institutions and other companies in their effort to save them and the jobs they provide, Putin warned against state interference in the private sector. He added that this error was made by the Soviet Union with disastrous results and the Russian Federation will not make the same mistake, even though it has set aside US$ 50 billion to help its crisis-affected companies. He pointed out that while the government will help with debt servicing and lending, the key initiatives will be lower taxes, boosting domestic consumption and other ways of creating an attractive environment for investment.

Addressing participants on the first day of the World Economic Forum, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said: From late last December, we have seen signs in the recovery of the Chinese economy; the signs are small ones but they give me hope. He pointed to increases in bank lending, prices of industrial products and consumption. He noted that the increase in bank loans was Rmb 900 billion in the first 20 days of 2009 compared to Rmb 700 billion in December and 400 billion Rmb in November. Prices of major industrial products have also picked up while the inventory of goods held up in ports in China has declined. In addition, despite falling commodity prices, growth in consumption was maintained at between 20% and 21%. The premier revealed that at the start of the Lunar New Year, consumption rose 21% compared to the same period last year.

Anand Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, India and Co-Chair of the Annual Meeting 2009, talking about the relevance of the summit said, Davos fills the vital need for a global and dialogue-based platform where knowledgeable and empowered stakeholders can collaborate to address issues of common criticality. I cant think of a better time and a better reason to be at Davos.

It is important that leaders who come here go back and work on ways of finding far-reaching policies that will allow us to create sustainable economic growth, create jobs and coordinate macroeconomic policies, insisted Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations (1997-2006), Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and Co-Chair, Annual Meeting 2009, on the opening day of the five-day Annual Meeting.

I believe we are also facing a crisis of governance at a national and international level. The current architecture of managing global affairs is broken and needs to be fixed. We have new players that have to be integrated and the poor have to be given a voice, he said. The world has changed; are we capable of changing fast enough to save the planet?

The world is still in crisis, yet we should treat it as an opportunity to set goals for how we want to come out of it, such as energy sufficiency, world pollution...and shape policies which will help to solve some of those problems, said Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation, USA, and Co-Chair of the Annual Meeting 2009. Dont lets lose sight of what creates wealth; its open markets, capitalism and weve proved this again and again in last century, he cautioned.
Earlier, Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, said that the world was in the midst of a transformational crisis where leaders in Davos need to first help manage the crisis and second to shape the post-crisis world. Because only if we look at longer-term perspectives can we recreate trust in the economic system and in the future, he said.

More than 2,500 participants from 96 countries are participating in the Annual Meeting held under the theme Shaping the Post-Crisis World, including a record 40 heads of state or government. Key finance, foreign affairs, trade and energy ministers will join heads of non-governmental organizations, social entrepreneurs and religious leaders at the Meeting. Around 60% of the participants are business leaders drawn principally from the Forums members 1,000 of the foremost companies from around the world and across all economic sectors.

The Co-Chairs of this years WEF at Davos are:

• Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations (1997-2006); Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum
• Stephen Green, Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings, United Kingdom
• Anand Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, India
• Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation, USA
• Maria Ramos, Group Chief Executive, Transnet Limited, South Africa
• Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive, Royal Dutch Shell plc, Netherlands
• Werner Wenning, Chairman of the Board of Management, Bayer, Germany

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit organization.