Bali: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, United States President Joe Biden and Indonesia President Joko Widodo on Tuesday reaffirmed their commitment to the G-20 as the premier body for global economic cooperation and discussed ways to use it to tackle climate change, food and energy crisis, strengthen global health architecture and promote technological transformation.

The leaders met on the sidelines of the ongoing G-20 summit in Bali in Indonesia, which is the outgoing chair of the group.

India takes over the year-long rotating presidency in November and will host the next summit.

In a readout of the meeting released by the US, Biden congratulated Widodo for Indonesia’s “leadership to galvanise countries around the world to launch the Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) for Pandemic PPR hosted by the World Bank (Pandemic Fund) to address gaps in pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response”.

He added: “This success has laid the foundation to take forward substantive health-finance collaborations during India’s G-20 presidency.”

PM Modi affirmed that G-20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation, and underlined the importance of G-20 continuing to demonstrate its capacity to bring together major economies, to overcome global challenges.

The prime minister affirmed that India would give voice to other developing countries during its Presidency, and emphasized G-20’s role in assisting vulnerable countries; supporting inclusive development, strengthening economic security and global supply chains; developing improved and innovative financing models for multilateral financial institutions; providing solutions to challenges like climate change, pandemics, economic fragility, reducing poverty and achieving SDGs; and leveraging public and private financing to close the infrastructure gap, Prime Minister’s Office said.

“President Biden applauded Indonesia’s G20 Presidency for its efforts on a successful G20 Leaders’ Summit,” the readout said further, adding: “He looks forward to continuing to support the G20’s work under India’s Presidency.”

The annual G20 Leaders’ Summit began on Tuesday with participating world leaders deliberating extensively upon key issues of global concern including challenges posed by Covid-19 under the Summit theme of ‘Recover Together, Recover Stronger’.

G20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation representing around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.