MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

G20 summit in London next April with President Obama

London will be hosting next G20

The next summit of the Group of 20 countries on the global economic crisis will be held in London on April 2 next year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on Wednesday. It will also be Barack Obama first visit to London as the new US president.

"The next meeting of the G20 will be held in London on April 2" he told members of Parliament at his weekly question session in the House of Commons. "It will deal with the major questions of economic action that are necessary and I've talked to the incoming US administration and president-elect (Barack) Obama expects to come to Britain at that time" he added. Britain takes over the chairmanship of the G20 group of developed and developing countries next year. At the recent G20 emergency summit in Washington leaders of the world's most important economies agreed to launch stimulus packages to foster growth while insisting that private enterprise, open markets and free trade remain the foundations of the global economy and finances. Six areas will be specifically targeted including regulating those parts of the financial markets that have exacerbated the crisis, boosting transparency and reforming "fat cat" compensation practices. But the summit, hosted by outgoing US President George W. Bush, left markets and analysts unimpressed since there were no specifics about reforms to banking regulation and international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. In the latest effort to head off a global recession, the EU proposed a 200 billion Euro stimulus package, China cut its interest rates after having early in the month announced a 580 billion US dollars stimulus plan. On Tuesday the US Federal Reserve said that it would pump a massive 800 billion more into the economy to try to stabilize (and de-intoxicate) the reeling financial system there plus having rescued giant Citicorp group. G20 is made up of the European Union, the G-7 group (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan), South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and Russia.