ANKARA: The world’s 20 leading economies have launched a new grouping aimed at boosting the role of women in global economic growth.

The W-20 — a grouping of female leaders — was launched yesterday in the Turkish capital Ankara where finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 were meeting for talks on the global economy. The group aims to work toward empowering women and ensuring their participation in economic growth.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said women’s participation was paramount to economic growth and said one of the best indicators for the prosperity of a country was the smile on the face of its women. Davutoglu said: “If the women are smiling ... you can be sure that their country is happy.”

Davutoglu also called on G20 leaders to reduce youth unemployment globally adding that otherwise young people would seek to move to advanced economies in search for jobs.

“I call all the G20 leaders to work together to decrease young unemployment” he said at the event launching Women-20.

“If there is no global remedy for young unemployment be sure that these young people will be migrants or refugees in advanced economies to find jobs.”

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Cevdet Yilmaz said more needs to be done to achieve 2 percent global growth over five years as targeted by G20 countries last year.

Turkey holds the G20 presidency this year and has just finished hosting a meeting of finance ministers in the capital Ankara from where Yilmaz was speaking.

Yilmaz who is Turkey’s deputy prime minister in charge of the economy also said that an interest rate rise by the US Federal Reserve in the coming months would not have a fundamental impact on emerging markets describing the expected move as “normalisation”.

However he said that preparations were being made for different scenarios for US Federal Reserve policy.

Emerging markets including Turkey have been hit by capital outflows on speculation about when the United States will increase interest rates with yield-hungry investors moving money out of riskier investments.

In recent months domestic political uncertainty has also spooked investors exacerbating the sell-off in emerging markets.

G20 leaders warily watching economic clouds gathering in China and the possibility of an end to zero interest rates in the United States steered a careful course at their meeting in Turkey at a time of uneven and fragile growth.

The two-day gathering in Ankara came less then a month after China shocked financial markets with a surprise devaluation of its currency triggering global jitters about declining growth and slumping stocks in the world’s second-largest economy.

“The major challenge facing the global economy is that growth remains moderate and uneven” said International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde. “The current economic situation is characterised by the word uncertainty” she said.

The final G20 communique unsurprisingly stayed clear of any specific mention of China. But in a clear nudge to Beijing it also urged states to avoid competitive currency devaluations that would give an unfair advantage to domestic exporters.

It also did not make any direct reference to the US Federal Reserve with economists warning a lift-off interest rate rise at its meeting in September could deal a body blow to vulnerable emerging markets. But the statement appeared to acknowledge a Fed rate rise could be on the cards at some point saying that “in line with the improving economic outlook monetary policy tightening is more likely in some advanced economies.”

Lagarde said there was an “extremely broad and in-depth discussion” of the Fed’s policies. She urged the US central bank to make the move when there was “no uncertainty”.

The communique acknowledged the fragility of the recovery saying “global growth falls short of our expectations”.

The IMF has said in its latest world economic outlook that it expects global growth to be 3.3 percent in 2015 and expand to 3.8 percent in 2016 — forecasts Lagarde said would have to be pruned further. But the ministers and central bank chiefs said they were confident “the global economic recovery will gain speed” vowing to carefully calibrate economic and monetary policies in the pursuit of this goal.

The Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Yilmaz who chaired the meeting said “we are aware of the risks and challenges ahead of us”. “The world needs better cooperation of the chief players.”

A senior US Treasury official said that US growth was “stable and steady” but added it would be good if “Europe was growing in a stronger way than it is”.

The official said that economic policymakers needed to make use of all three tools available to them — monetary policy fiscal policy and structural reforms — rather than just monetary policy alone.

The US official said that China understands that “many in the world are watching” its communications with markets after its surprise devaluation and called on Beijing to keep up its ambitious reform agenda. In contrast with previous meetings the G20 gathering was not dominated by crisis in the eurozone with the deal on Greece’s debt soothing nerves. “The situation in Europe is considerably better than it was a year ago” the US official said.

Agencies