(MENAFN) South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated that Washington’s choice to skip the forthcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg is “their loss,” emphasizing that the absence will impact the US more than the summit itself, which he insists will continue as planned.

Last week, US President Donald Trump declared that no official from his administration would participate in the gathering of leaders from the world’s largest economies scheduled for November 22 to 23.

He justified the decision by asserting that Afrikaners, a white minority descended from Dutch settlers who held power during apartheid, are being “killed and slaughtered,” and their land “illegally confiscated” in South Africa.

Ramaphosa has consistently dismissed Trump’s claims as false information and met with the US president in Washington in May in an effort to ease tensions.

Speaking to journalists outside parliament in Cape Town on Wednesday, Ramaphosa described the Trump administration’s action as “unfortunate.”

“The G20 will go on, all other heads of state will be here. In the end we will take fundamental decisions and their absence is their loss,” he told reporters, according to a news agency.

Ramaphosa further noted that “boycott politics” has rarely succeeded in his experience. He also reproached the US for stepping away from the “very important role” it “should be playing as the biggest economy in the world,” the agency reported.

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