This year is the moment of truth for the Group of 20’s growth agenda. The leading rich and developing nations that comprise the G20 made 1,000 structural reform commitments back in 2014 with the goal of raising G20 GDP by 2 percent by 2018. Instead of being 2 percent bigger, GDP is forecast to be more than 3 percent smaller, relative to the October 2013 baseline. With the commitment period soon to expire, the question for Argentina’s 2018 host year is: What's next?

The G20 needs continuity to remain credible. Extending its growth agenda and target beyond 2018 is a good way of achieving this. The group has already quietly dropped the October 2013 baseline, measuring instead the growth impact of its reforms. This makes sense and provides a better measure of the G20's progress. But given progress has been slow, Argentina will need to do something to revitalize the process and increase ambition.

Competition reform, I argue, provides a solution. Reforms to boost competition within G20 economies are an existing theme of the growth agenda, so it provides the much-needed continuity. But while reforms on competition have been the largest contributor to the growth target, they have also made up the smallest number of commitments.

Read the full article about the G20's growth agenda for Argentina 2018 by Adam Triggs at Brookings.