The Summit of the Business 20 (B20), the G20 engagement group representing the international business community, ended today in Buenos Aires. Argentine President, Mauricio Macri, attended the closing session at La Rural Convention Centre, and formally received the group’s recommendations to the G20 leaders. “Companies are important in the process of dialogue and consensus building,” he said.

“To face our common challenge, we all must do our part. Global solutions require the commitment and action not only of governments but also of all the sectors of society, including the business community,” Macri said.

Macri congratulated the B20 for its work and commitment throughout the year and said: “We decided to lead the G20 in the spirit of an honest broker. Our biggest challenge is finding common ground to move forward together. Today, less than two months away from the Leaders’ Summit in Buenos Aires, the first in South America, we have many reasons to be optimistic. Collective compromise is prevailing, and with the support of our partners, we expect to achieve concrete results.”

Minutes earlier, Daniel Funes de Rioja, Vice-president of the Industrial Chamber of Argentina (UIA) and B20 Chair, said: “We want the Leaders' Declaration to reflect some of our recommendations. These are the result of our conviction, our commitment, our responsibility as the business community.”

The 89-page document is the fruit of several months of dialogue between over 1,700 business leaders from 740 companies and 260 employers’ organizations.

The B20 recommendations focus on three main areas: promoting equal opportunities and inclusiveness, advancing economic growth, and ensuring the sustainable use of resources and actions to combat climate change.

In line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the document puts an emphasis on creating jobs and providing quality education, developing infrastructure, promoting an environment that fosters the creation and development of MSMEs, and ensuring equal opportunities for all, with a focus on gender equality and the inclusion of the most vulnerable in society.

With respect to employment and education, the document reads that “future inclusive employability is a priority” in education systems and calls for “developing a ‘learning to learn’ model that will help our population stay open to the future.”

“Open, dynamic and inclusive labour markets with simple, transparent, flexible and predictable legal employment frameworks allowing for a diversity of work forms continue to be key for inclusiveness,” the declaration adds.

For the development of small and medium-sized companies, which represent 95% of all companies and account for 60–70% of jobs and 55% of gross domestic product, the B20 encourages the development of clusters and innovation networks as an alternative way of sharing knowledge and best practices. It also highlights the importance of financial inclusion and the use of digital tools.

As regards gender equality, the engagement group believes that it is necessary to “eradicate gender stereotypes that may discourage women from acquiring technical skills or pursuing entrepreneurial activities through campaigns and role models.” It also demands “urgently removing any legal restrictions that hinder women’s participation in the formal labour market” and “eradicating all forms of discrimination in recruitment, training and promotion.”

The declaration concludes that “75% of the B20 proposed action plans are immediately implementable at national level, while the remaining 25% are meant to help making progress within multilateral forums.”

About the B20 Summit

The B20 Summit brought together over 1,800 people and concluded the 2018 work agenda of the longest-running engagement group of the G20. Over two days, representatives from the private sector, governments and international organizations discussed the future of education and work, the multilateral trading system, infrastructure, energy, transparency and digitalization, among other topics.