Up development fund to $100bn, India tells WB

 India on Sunday asked the World Bank to increase its developmental fund to $100 billion a year from the existing $50-60 billion and called for enhancing the share and voice of developing nations in the management of institutions providing assistance under it.

The World Bank provides developmental assistance through International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

“These three institutions provide approximately $50-60 billion per annum in concessional, non-concessional and private sector resources,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in his address to the Development Committee of the World Bank.

“Within next five years, we should work to raise annual financing volumes from the World Bank Group to $100 billion a year,” said Jaitley, who is here to attend the annual Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“This would be a kind of minimum contribution from the Bank Group for the developing countries, in their task of bringing about development and finance reconstruction,” he said.

Observing that the World Bank is highly capital constrained, Jaitley said the IFC has no space to invest today even at low level volumes it has been doing for some years.

IBRD would not be able to maintain lending levels of even $20 billion per annum in two years’ time, he said.

To better reflect the increasing weight of Developing and Transition Countries (DTCs), their share and voice in the management of these institutions also needs to grow, Jaitley asserted.

‘India has favourable investment climate’

India has created a favourable investment climate in all sectors which has resulted in a hefty increase in FDI in the last two years, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the World Bank on Sunday.

“India has liberalised foreign investment policies and created a very favourable investment climate for investments across all segments of economy — agriculture, manufacturing and services — under major initiatives of ‘Make in India’, ‘StartUp India’ and ‘Digital India’,” Jaitley said in his address to the 93rd meeting of the development committee of the World Bank.