Istanbul hosted the meeting of the G20 finance ministers and central banks governors. During the event, participants acknowledged exchange rates manipulation as totally unacceptable. In the background of the global economic doldrums, such vicious practice is aimed to spur growth of national economies. A lot of officials brought forward this issue in their speeches summing up that “currency wars are no good for the global economy”. Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov commented that not all changes in currency values took place as a result of manipulations. Depreciation of some currencies is caused by a current account deficit followed by contraction of fiscal revenues from commodities sales. This situation occurred in Russia and other oil producing countries. “In some cases, countries are making efforts to push exchange rates aiming to gain a trade advantage. All G20 finance ministers came to an agreement that fixing currency exchange rates is wicked. This issue has been already brought up at the previous meetings of this format,” the Russian finance minister stated. Experts take this unanimous accord with a pinch of salt. Looking back, this issue was on the agenda of G20 meetings after the financial crisis of 2008-2009. That time, some countries were enthusiastic about artificial depreciation of their national currencies to bolster their export sales. Finance ministers used to make similar bold statements. So, history is repeating itself.
