BRISBANE, Australia — Under pressure to jolt the lethargic world economy back to life, leaders of the G-20 nations on Sunday finalized a plan to boost global gross domestic product by more than $2 trillion over five years.
A communique from the Brisbane summit of Group of 20 wealthy and emerging nations revealed that the plan includes investing in infrastructure, increasing trade, and creating a global infrastructure hub that would help match potential investors with projects.
Leaders also aim to reduce the gap between male and female participation in the workforce by 25 percent by 2025, saying that would put 100 million more women in employment and reduce poverty.
At the end of the summit, Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, said countries will hold each other to account by monitoring implementation of their commitments to boost growth.
The G-20, criticized in recent years as being all talk and no action, was urged to deliver measurable results this year. Perhaps in response, the group said the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will also play a role in monitoring progress and estimating the economic benefits of the growth plan.
The IMF’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, dismissed concerns that countries might fudge their growth figures, saying that while the monitoring is not scientific, it is thorough and detailed.
‘‘We’ll make sure they keep their feet to the fire,’’ she said.
The communique said that if the $2 trillion initiative is fully implemented, it will lift global GDP by 2.1 percent above expected levels by 2018 and create millions of jobs.
Abbott said countries agreed on more than 800 new measures to spur the global economy, which the IMF describes as facing a ‘‘new mediocre.’’
But the G-20, which represents about 85 percent of the global economy, faces an uphill struggle. International agencies have downgraded growth forecasts in recent months. Growth in China and Japan has weakened, and Europe is on the brink of another recession.
And experts warned that the countries would need to comply with every one of the 800 measures to achieve the 2.1 percent target, a virtually impossible task.
‘‘There are two questions: whether the specifics are credible and whether the political backing by leaders is convincing,’’ said Thomas Bernes, an analyst at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think thank.
Abbott said the group had been most productive on the issue of trade, calling it the ‘‘key driver of growth.’’ The leaders adopted plans to streamline customs procedures and reduce regulatory burdens.
The G-20 also tackled the tricky issue of tax evasion by multinational corporations, declaring that profits should be taxed in the country where they are earned. There has been an ongoing effort by governments to crack down on the practice of big companies such as Google and Amazon moving profits earned in one country to others with lower tax rates.