H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, in her capacity as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), will meet with leaders of the 2023 India G20 Presidency in New Delhi on 29 August 2022. The Special Advocate is Honorary Patron of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI).
Queen Máxima is anticipated to meet with India’s Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman, Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Shaktikanta Das (virtually), G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant, and representatives from India’s G20 GPFI Presidency, among others.
India is a focus country of the UNSGSA’s advocacy, and the Special Advocate engages with the G20 Chairs to address the importance of financial and digital inclusion. This includes ensuring that digital public infrastructure and the digital economy work for underserved people and small businesses.
The meetings follow on the Special Advocate’s recent engagements with Indian leaders, including Minister Sitharaman at the G20 Summit in Rome in November 2021, as well as with Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, who is also the former G20 Sherpa, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meetings in Davos in May 2022.
Additionally, the Special Advocate delivered a keynote address at the 2021 G20 Summit in Rome about how micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and women-led businesses can best recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Further, the UNSGSA met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as other leaders from the public, private, and development sectors, during a country visit to India in May 2018.
The G20 (or Group of Twenty) is an international forum of the 19 largest national economies and the European Union, established with the aim of enhancing global economic growth and development. Queen Máxima has been Honorary Patron of the GPFI since 2011, where she strives to advance the G20’s work on inclusive finance.