Billionaires in the world’s twenty largest economies recorded cumulative gains of $2.2 trillion last year, in other words an amount that would allow all the world’s residents to no longer be poor, says an analysis released today by the NGO Oxfam.

The UK-based organisation is urging the G20 summit, which takes place this weekend in South Africa, to emulate that country’s example, tackle abysmal inequalities and ease the debt blight that undermines developing countries.

In addition to securing a cumulative $2.2 trillion in 2024, billionaires in the 19 member countries of this scheme saw their fortunes grow to $15.6 trillion (+16.5%), Oxfam noted in its analysis, based on a Forbes magazine list.

“The annual cost of lifting the 3.8 billion people currently living below the poverty line out of poverty is $1.65 trillion,” it estimates.

Oxfam endorses a South African proposal within the G20 to establish an international advisory committee to combat inequalities, along the lines of the GIEC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“If the South African G20 establishes a new international advisory committee on inequalities, it will be a huge step in the fight to address the crisis of inequalities,” comments Amitabh Behar, executive director.

Furthermore, Oxfam calls for the world’s rich to be “taxed fairly to help end poverty and fight climate deregulation.”

The NGO accuses the US government, which is boycotting the Johannesburg summit, of implementing “disastrous policies – from reckless customs tariffs to reactive tax breaks, passing through budget cuts – that increase inequality.”

The G20 is made up of 19 nations, the European Union, and the African Union; it represents 85% of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population.

South Africa hopes that the host summit, the first in Africa, will see progress on issues for African countries and those in the so-called “global south” before the US takes over the rotating G20 presidency in 2026.