The leaders of business groups from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe united in their condemnation of any return to protectionism and urged world leaders to use the London Summit on 2 April to strike a new global trade deal.

Employers' groups from more than 20 countries held a summit at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday 18 March, hosted by the British Government's Business and Enterprise Department jointly with the CBI, the UK’s largest business organisation.

In a joint statement, Lord Mandelson, the UK Business Secretary, and Martin Broughton, the President of the UK’s CBI employers’ group said there had been a useful and constructive discussion'

The business leaders urged the G20 to achieve three things:

• Urgently renew the commitment to conclude the WTO Round;
• To increase the supply of trade finance; and
• To pursue the need for anti-protectionism across the globe.

They said a new trade deal would be 'the best insurance policy the international community has against a retreat to protectionism.' 'A successful Doha Round alone would insure against protectionist pressures that could cost the global economy as much as $170bn a year,' they said.

The urged international institutions and governments to step in to substitute private flows of trade finance which have been drying up. 'If left unchecked, this could restrain many hundreds of billions of dollars of global trade over the next two years,' they warned.

They said protectionism was partly to blame for the fall in trade and called on the G20 to 'reconfirm and strengthen their commitment' not to bring in protectionist measures. 'As the London Summit draws near, we believe that the response of the G20 leaders must be decisive and wide-ranging, in the interests of our long-term prosperity,' they said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a roundtable of leaders that leaders must be absolutely clear' that protectionism offered no solution. 'It's the road to ruin,' he said. 'It protects no-one in the long run at all and we are for a free trade world where we remove barriers rather than create barriers, no matter what the temptation is at this particular point in time for individual countries.'

Speaking on the fringes of the summit, 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. The crisis is unique because it happened to each of us all over the world at the same time. That's why we consider we have to handle the problem at the worldwide level.'

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.'

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. 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.'

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.'

The commitment to 'fight all forms of protectionism and to maintain open trade and investment' was right at the top of the communiqué issued by the finance ministers and central bankers of the G20 group of developed and emerging economies after their meeting in southern England on 14 March.