The G20: What is the G20? How does it work? Who are its members?

I’m sure most of you reading this blog would know the answers to the above questions or well to most of them atleast, considering this is all that we have been hearing about or reading about in the past few days. However, since there was so much hype around the G20 meeting which took place on April 2nd in London at the Excel Exhibition Centre, we thought that we would answer all of the above at one go and in the process try and figure out what the din was and is all about. Is the meet going to lead to some concrete answers to our very genuine financial crisis or will it end up being just another talking shop? Well to begin with:The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 to bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy. The inaugural meeting of the G-20 took place in on December 1516, 1999,and was hosted by German and Canadian finance ministers. The G-20 was created as a response both to the financial crises of the late 1990s and to a growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance.Unlike international institutions such as the IMF or World Bank, the G-20 (like the G-7) has no permanent staff of its own. The G-20 chair rotates between members, and is selected from a different regional grouping of countries each year.In 2009 the G-20 chair is the United Kingdom, and in 2010 it will be South Korea. The chair is part of a revolving three-member management Troika of past, present and future chairs. The incumbent chair establishes a temporary secretariat for the duration of its term, which coordinates the group's work and organizes its meetings.
As for its membership, the G-20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and also the European Union who is represented by the rotating Council presidency and the European Central Bank. To ensure global economic fora and institutions work together, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank, plus the chairs of the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank, also participate in G-20 meetings on an ex-officio basis. The G-20 thus brings together important industrial and emerging-market countries from all regions of the world.Interestingly, together, member countries represent around 90 per cent of global gross national product, 80 per cent of world trade (including EU intra-trade) as well as two-thirds of the world's population.Now that the facts are clear lets analyze the fiction part of it in the upcoming posts... and we would love to hear your take on this too.....