The heads of employers groups from more than 20 countries gathered in London on 18 March for a summit to air businesses' concerns ahead of the London Summit. It was hosted by the British Government's Business and Enterprise Department jointly with the CBI, the UK's largest business organisation and was chaired by Lord Peter Mandelson, the Business Secretary. The meeting was held in 10 Downing Street and addressed by Gordon Brown.

During a break from the all-day summit, leaders of the groups in China, India, France and India spoke to this website about their fears over protectionism, the impact of the crisis on their domestic industries and their hopes for the London Summit. India and South Africa saw the restoration of the global financial system as a priority while France sought a return of confidence and China hoped it would contribute to the early conclusion of the current round of negotiations over a new global trade deal.

Laurence Parisot, President of the French group MEDEF, said governments had done a 'tremendous job' since the crisis broke but urged them to 'make the best effort' to resist protectionism. 'We consider that protectionism is a threat and we have to resist [it].' She said economic nationalism was very different from the 1930s. 'It is not only tariffs and regulations for imports of goods and services. Sometimes we might consider a bail-out of an industry could be considered protectionism,' she said. 'That’s why we have to be cautious and call on governments to make the best effort to resist protectionism.'

She said French businesses had been hit hard because of their exposure to export markets across the world. 'In some sectors the decrease is 50%, 60% so it is absolutely awful and we very afraid that many, many companies will go into bankruptcy by the end of the spring. That’s why we consider we have to handle the problem at the worldwide level. The crisis is unique because it happened to each of us all over the world at the same time.'

'We want the G20 to be able to give a message of confidence to the world. That is the key is to re-establish trust and confidence among politicians, consumers, employers.'

Brian Molefe, President of Business Unity South Africa, said it would 'disastrous' if countries reverted to protectionism. 'One of the challenges will be to translate that into real action so we hope the [London] Summit will find ways to make sure that we do have a retreat to the protectionism of the 1930s because as we know that was quite disastrous for the world economy.'

He said the crisis was hitting southern African business 'very hard'. 'Demand for exports has decreased, demand for commodities is decreasing and there is talk of retrenchment which would be very unfortunate for an economy that is beginning to finds it feet.'

Asked what he hoped the London Summit could achieve, Mr Molefe said restoring lending was businesses' priority. 'To restore lending one has to restore confidence because the inability to lend is really a crisis of confidence.' He said he wanted the Summit to revitalise the IMF and ensure that it and the World Bank were more representative of Africa.

Yu Ping, vice chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, described protectionism as a 'blind alley'. 'Whoever uses protectionist measures will not only harm others but in the end will harm themselves so we hope all countries will work together to fight protectionism,' he said. He said that was important at this 'critical moment' in the downturn. 'We want to send a signal to the world that all governments are working together to ensure quick recovery of the world recovery and protectionist measures won't help.

He said that with exports falling for four consecutive months, the priority was to create more domestic demand to offset that. He said unemployment was a major problem and a burden on the state 'so we want to create more jobs by increasing demand to create jobs'.

Asked about the outcome of the London Summit, he said: 'We want a signal to the world that we are against protectionism and that the Doha development [trade] round is beneficial to a sound, healthy multilateral trade system. We hope the G20 summit will contribute to the early conclusion of the Doha round.'

Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of the CII Mission for Sustainable Growth and Climate Change in India, said the main problem in his country was that India was reacting to protectionism among consumer countries. 'India has become much more open to opening up business globally,' he said. 'But I think protectionism is a problem in many of the consuming countries that are markets for goods from India and India is becoming protectionist as a result.'
Mr Godrej said the impact of the crisis on Indian business was a 'mixed bag' with exporters, housebuilders and carmakers hurt but consumer goods companies doing well. Asked what he wanted to London Summit to achieve, he said the priority was to fix the global financial system. 'The broken part of the system has resulted in a lack of credit and the productive part of the economy not doing well,' he said. 'So we are looking for finance to restart, for confidence to be built up. If we can fix the global financial system and trade can start again that will be a huge development.'