CAPE TOWN, March 18 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Andrew Whitfield on Tuesday called for a global consensus to ensure that the new opportunities in the green economy lead to shared prosperity.

Whitfield was leading a delegation of officials from the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition in briefing a joint session of the Portfolio and Select Committees on the policy priorities of South Africa's G20 Presidency and his department's role.

The session was held ahead of the first G20 Trade and Investment Working Group meeting, which was held virtually later in the day.

The working group will hold more meetings later this year ahead of the October ministerial meeting, focusing on trade growth, a responsive trade agenda, green industrialization, and the World Trade Organization reform.

Whitfield told parliamentarians that the G20, as a forum of the world's largest economies, has a unique responsibility to address the environmental, social and economic challenges hindering stability and sustainable development.

"We need to ensure that trade and climate/environmental policies should be mutually supportive and are consistent with World Trade Organization principles that contribute to the objectives of sustainable development. Mobilizing support and resources to tackle the internal disparities driven by the uneven distributional effects of trade and globalization is critical," he said.

The deputy minister added that investments in developing countries must move away from "pit to port" activities that promote resource extraction.

"There is a need to promote beneficiation and local value addition of resources at source resulting in an additive rather than an extractive relationship," Whitfield said.

"This necessitates finding a requisite balance that ensures that resource-rich countries benefit greatly from their endowments and investments that contribute to structural transformation and industrial development while there is also a flow of resources to ensure the integrity of global and regional value chains," he added. Enditem

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