India’s G-20 leadership: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that the global community counts a lot on India’s leadership of the G-20 at a time when the world is facing a persistent economic slowdown and social distress.
“India, which is the president of G-20 countries, remains among the countries that perform better than the global average and by a good percentage,” IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva told the media.
Notably, India formally assumed the presidency of G20 (Group of 20) on December 1, 2022. New Delhi is also scheduled to hold the next G20 Leaders’ Summit, at the level of Heads of State/Government, on September 9-10 this year.
‘We count a lot on India’s leadership of the G-20…’: IMF
“We count a lot on India’s leadership of the G-20. Because it is such a critical time for the world to protect its own well-being by protecting the integrated global economy. I hope that India will do that huge global service keeping us together,” Georgieva said.
She also hailed India for embracing digitization to be a strong comparative advantage. “What we see us working extremely well for India is how the country has taken digitization that was accelerated by COVID-19 to be a strong comparative advantage, both for public policy and for private sector growth,” the IMF Managing Director said in response to a question.
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According to her, India is a shining example of vaccinations carried out in a prioritised and highly effective manner because of the combination of digital ID and digital public infrastructure, which enables India to move policy support on a digital platform and to properly target those who are recipients of the support as well.
“On the private sector side, because that has become a fertile ground for very rapid expansion of branded financing and enterprises. And that India intends to take to the G-20 as an area to build comparative strength,” she said.
According to Georgieva, one of the priorities in the G-20 is how to make digitization built on a public platform, a public infrastructure that allows everybody to plug in and significantly reduces costs of digitization; how that can be a source of growth and employment.
IMF’s remarks on India’s reforms
According to her, India has done some painful reforms which are now paying off. She said that the country faces difficulties on the climate front, a very dramatic impact on agriculture because of the very severe vulnerability of climate shocks, especially droughts and high temperatures.
“India is of course impacted by developments in Asia. One of the countries — Sri Lanka is a neighbour, Pakistan is a neighbour — these are countries that are volatile. And, of course the fact that China has slowed down so dramatically, it has seen an impact for the whole of Asia,” Georgieva remarked.
(With PTI inputs)