Thaindian News

This year the Group of Eight or G8 summit is being held in the Italian city of L’Aquila. Silivio Berlusconi will be the host and eight leaders of these major economies along with their spouses have started reaching the place. This year the summit carries huge significance as the world is reeling under economic slowdown and the following recession. This slowdown, as reported by experts is the worst since the great depression of the 1930s.

So what these major economies and world powers decide and deliberate upon, will have huge bearing on the world economic scenario also. US, Russia, Japan, France, Britain, Italy, Canada are part of this round. Some of the important topics on which these leaders would held discussions are obviously the economic slowdown, financial crisis, global warming and food security.

But many experts as well as major newspapers of the world are saying that expectations from this gathering is very low. For example an eminent news paper like the Daily Telegraph of UK has recently written in its editorial that, “The G8 summit is the lumbering white elephant of international statesmanship :expensive to feed, often aimless in its approach, and seemingly unsure of what it is meant to be doing.”

But some do see this summit as important and believe that if implemented properly the summit could deliver on issues like hunger and poverty. For example one of the recent U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reports has pointed out that the number of hungry in the world has increased by 11 percent and by 100 million in the year 2008. So these reports do signify the severity of the situation and summits like G8 would do well to tackle these problems.