New Delhi/Washington, Apr 23: India’s economic growth in the current year is robust and highest among all large economies and reflects India’s resilience and strong recovery, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday. Participating in the 105th Meeting of the Development Committee Plenary in Washington DC, the Minister said that India faced the Covid pandemic crisis with great resilience and made remarkable progress in vaccination and administered more than 1.85 billion Covid vaccine doses. She underlined that India voluntarily offered Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) platform to all countries and stand willing to provide assistance for other public-goods platforms recognising the importance of replication of proven and scalable digital platforms. The Finance Minister drew attention of the participants in the meeting to the unprecedented situation in Sri Lanka and hoped for decisive relief to the island country so that they come out of the crisis. The items on the agenda of the Development Committee Plenary included Digitalisation & Development, Making Debt Work for Development & Macroeconomic Stability and World Bank Group’s Response to Global Impacts of the War in Ukraine: A Proposed Roadmap. On a week-long official visit to the US, Sitharaman met World Bank Group President David Malpass and discussed a range of issues including India’s continued recovery from Covid pandemic, impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the world economy and India’s G20 Presidency and World Bank’s leadership in India. She expressed concerns about the risks to global recovery due to rising uncertainty amidst enhanced geopolitical tensions. The Minister suggested that the multilateralism has become more critical as the world is undergoing a phase of exceptional uncertainty. “On account of the pandemic and the recent geo-political developments, there is a need for the World Bank to come to the rescue of countries facing debt stress. In particular, the World Bank needs to pay special attention to Sri Lanka, which is facing an unprecedented economic situation,” said Sitharaman. During the meeting with World Bank chief, the Finance Minister highlighted India’s roadmap for infrastructure development and hoped for World Bank’s continued support for financing investments for the National Infrastructure pipeline and Gati Shakti programme. UNI
