Union Minister for Tourism, Culture and Development of Northeast Region G. Kishan Reddy has announced that the 18th and final meeting of the G-20 meeting with the heads of the nations attending and chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, on September 9 and 10.
Addressing a press conference at the party office here on Monday, he said prior to that, a three-day agriculture working group of ministers is scheduled to be held at Hitex Convention on June 15-17. That would be the final meeting after preliminary meetings were earlier held in Indore, Chandigarh and Varanasi.
The final meeting here will have ministers and officials concerned discuss sustainable agriculture, women’s role in farming, climate change and its impact on farming, best practices for agri-farming, new technologies, tackling food production, availability of foodgrains and eradicating hunger.
About 29 countries apart from India are expected to participate in these delibrations. Ten reputed international organisations including those from United Nations, ICRISAT – International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics in Sangareddy, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are also scheduled to take part, he said.
Presentations and exhibitions will be held as part of the meetings. Hyderabad had earlier hosted G-20 meetings on startups, financial working group, digital economy and health working group since January. Highlighting the importance of the G-20 meeting, the Union Minister said certain crucial discussions are being held in view of the prevailing global scenario with a war raging between Russia and Ukraine.
“The G-20 countries talks are being held around 46 sectors in 56 cities across the country and of the scheduled 250 meetings, 140 were done. These countries have 70% of the world population, 75%of the global trade and 80% of the GDP,” said Mr.Kishan Reddy.
He added that the final meeting on tourism will be held in Goa from June 19-21 with working group meetings already held in Rann of Kutch, Siliguri and Kashmir. The issues of cruise tourism, public-private sector participation, and other issues are to come up for discussion after which a tourism draft resolution will be passed under the title ‘Goa road map on tourism’.
Under the Culture Ministry, the next working group meeting will be held at Hampi with an earlier meeting having been held in Khajuraho. The final meeting will be held in Varanasi on June 24-26, he said.
The Minister denied reports about the media being restricted from attending the deliberations, stating that it was the policy of G-20 to release the final agreement by the ministers only