WASHINGTON, APRIL 21, 2013: ON the conclusion of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors's Meet, in a joint statement, it was announced that G20 economies need to do more to tackle the issues of tax evasion and international tax avoidance. They said more steps are required to be taken particularly in relation to tax havens and non-cooperative jurisdictions.

They welcomed the progress made towards automatic exchange of information which is expected to be the standard and urge all jurisdictions to move towards exchanging information automatically with their treaty partners, as appropriate. ''We look forward to the OECD working with G20 countries to report back on the progress in developing of a new multilateral standard on automatic exchange of information, taking into account country-specific characteristics. The Global Forum will be in charge of monitoring. We welcome the progress made in the development of an action plan on tax base erosion and profit shifting by the OECD and look forward to a comprehensive proposal and a substantial discussion at our next meeting in July,'' it added.

TheStatement also noted that half of G20 jurisdictions have now issued final regulations to implement Basel III, and the remainder commits to do so as soon as possible in 2013. They welcomed the assessments, in some cases initial and ongoing, by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision of consistency of these regulations with its framework and look forward to further progress on ensuring the conformity of the regulations with the Basel III text. They said that they look forward to the July report on comparability of risk-weighted assets. All the economies will then undertake the necessary legislative steps to implement resolution powers and tools consistent with the FSB’s Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes, including the legal basis for cross-border cooperation and coordination. The objective is to allow authorities to resolve financial institutions in an orderly manner. The FSB will report to the St Petersburg Summit on the progress made towards ending “too big to fail”.

They also noted the progress in implementation of OTC derivatives reforms and further committed to complete the remaining legislative and regulatory frameworks for these reforms. ''We look forward to the macroeconomic impact study of OTC regulatory reforms, which is underway. We urge the key regulators to intensify their efforts to address cross-border derivatives issues and report by our July meeting specific and practical recommendations to resolve by the St Petersburg Summit remaining cross-border conflicts, inconsistencies, gaps and duplicative requirements. We also call for a feasibility study on how information from trade repositories can be aggregated and shared among authorities, so as to enable comprehensive monitoring of risks to financial stability. Jurisdictions should remove barriers to trade reporting by market participants, with particular attention to removing barriers to reporting of counterparty information and to information access by authorities. We look forward to further policy recommendations for the oversight and regulation of the shadow banking sector by the Leaders’ Summit. We support the Regulatory Oversight Committee of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) initiative in their efforts to launch the Global LEI Foundation as soon as possible. We reiterate our call on the IASB and FASB to finalize by the end of 2013 their work on key outstanding projects for achieving a single set of high-quality standards,'' it added.

The G20 also reiterated its support for FATF work, notably the identification and monitoring of high-risk jurisdictions with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies. ''We must tackle the risks raised by opacity of legal persons and legal arrangements, and encourage all countries to take measures to ensure they meet the FATF standards regarding the identification of the beneficial owners of legal persons, other corporate vehicles and trusts, that is also relevant for tax purposes,'' it added.