B20 Notes, First Day.

With President Calderon

Los Cabos is a beautiful small resort town of Mexico on the Baja peninsula. It is similar to our Antalya in Turkey, with big resorts and endless beaches. President Calderon chose this beautiful secluded part of Mexico to host the world's business and economy leaders.

We are here to discuss seven things at B20 with world leaders this year--- Food Security; Green Growth; Employment; Improving Transparency and Anti-Corruption; Trade and Investment; ICT and Innovation; Financing for Growth and Development. I am here with a larger Turkish delegation of TUSIAD, Turkish businessmen association and a contributing member of the ICT task-force of B20. We also have our Intel Mexico country manager present at the summit.

David Cameron

The attendance is largely from emerging markets just like in Cannes last year; lots of delegations from Russia, Latin American countries, Turkey, Asia, South Africa. But somehow the discussions are incredibly concentrated on the current economic issues in Europe. I listened to Australian prime minister Julie Gillard first day; she talked how she got her country keep growing through investment into innovation, schooling, broadband, creating jobs through investing further and what European governments and businesses should do to collaborate to get growing again. And I listened to David Cameron speak on how he will get UK to grow and had a chat with his aid on technology investments who we have met in Downing Street number 10 last year.

At Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s session with business leaders from around the world, economic austerity and how to make that sustainable was a big focus. There was deputy prime minister Ali Babacan, Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu present with the Prime Minister of Turkey alongside World Bank president Robert Zoellick and WTO Director General Pascal Lemy.

At night there was a dinner hosted by the President of Mexico, a majestic night with various cultural aspects of Mexico, music and food with great hospitality. I did not know Mexico is world’s third exporter for flat screens and fourth largest IT services provider country and with 112 million people, they have over 30% of PC penetration. As a country which is compared to Turkey very often it has very interesting statistics and excel in quite a number of areas.

It is good CEOs and politicans are talking; and to my pleasant surprise always on the issues of income disparity, responsible business, the digital divide and how to cooperate better going forward.