As crisis fades,G20 tries to get its mojo back

They are not nearly so glowing about their current muddle.

Top officials for the worlds biggest economic powers get nostalgic over how they mobilised to save the world from economic collapse in 2008. They are not nearly so glowing about their current muddle.

At meetings held in Washington last week,there was a sense that the Group of 20,which brings together policymakers who oversee the vast majority of global output,has grown bogged down by a sprawling agenda no longer focused by crisis.

Its very difficult to coordinate and to come up with meaningful results, said Ksenia Yudaeva,a deputy central bank governor for Russia,which organized this years G20 meetings.

Every step in right direction gets smaller and smaller.

Gone are the heady days of 2008 and 2009 when leaders at G20 summits hashed out major deals on fiscal stimulus and trade policy to counter a global financial crisis that threatened worldwide depression. In 2010 and 2011,the group was a forum for prodding European officials to come up with a plan to keep the euro zone from breaking up.

Since then,the list of issues on the G20 agenda has ballooned. It now includes everything from climate change and food security to youth unemployment,as if the body were a mini UN.

Whats happened is that the objective of the G20 has become confused, said Martin Parkinson,Australias treasury secretary. He said the body needs to focus more squarely on its core mission of making the global economy stronger and more stable.

Some of the challenges before the group are so great they will not be resolved anytime soon.

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The worlds economy remains dangerously unbalanced,economists and officials agree,with countries like China relying too heavily on exports and others like the US depending too much on imports. This leads to uncontrollable capital flows that can inflate dangerous bubbles.

While the G20 meetings on Thursday and Friday were dominated by concerns about a political crisis in Washington that could trigger a US debt default,officials also spent time trying to figure out how they might get their mojo back.

Finance ministers and central bankers tried to make their common statement as short as possible and also held meetings on how to trim the number of issues the forum should address.

Australia,which will host G20 meetings next year,hopes to put a brake on some of the mission creep. Parkinson said he hopes to focus next year on tying up loose ends,such as implementing new financial regulations leaders have already agreed to undertake.