The Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is leaving for St Petersburg on Wednesday to attend the G-20 Summit meeting.

At the sidelines of the Summit the BRICS leaders are expected to meet and discuss the issue of currency swap among the five countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They will also review the progress made in setting up of a BRICS Bank.

Currency volatility has severely impacted the emerging markets and the developing countries. Indian rupee has depreciated more than other currencies. There has been depreciation in the Brazilian rial, Indonesian rupiah and South African rand also.

The anticipated sort of withdrawal of Quantitative Easing 3 by US will lead to a change in flows, and already markets have anticipated that and money flows to the US have gone up and money has moved out from other markets into the United States and that has led to a lot of currency volatility, India has also been affected by this measure. This has been the main reason for currency volatility across the world.

India is likely to raise the issue of transfer pricing or base erosion and profit shifting by multinational companies. The OECD and G-20 have already initiated work on this issue

The situation in Syria is likely to impact oil trade and global economy. This issue is likely to be discussed at G-20. Incidentally the issue of energy subsidies is one of the issues that can come up in the G20. The G20 on many summits have urged for cutting down fossil fuel subsidy except those that are targeted to the poor. The Indian policy documents, the Eleventh Plan, the Twelfth Plan, the integrated energy have begun resorting to this measure.