Speaking to Indian reporters on Saturday during a news conference towards the end of her trip to Washington City, where she attended the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Sitharaman said there was a request for India to show how the Indian People assumed the deepening of digital applications.
“In fact, today in my meeting with World Bank President David Malpass, he said that you should now show the deepening of digital applications in India and how the common people are accepting them,” Sitharaman said after meeting Malpass at the World Bank’s headquarters here .
He said he would be happy from the World Bank side to work with India to bring it to the other parts of the world. Not only is there the World Bank, but every bilateral exchange I’ve had people have spoken very highly about India’s achievements on the digital side,” Sitharaman said in response to a question on the subject.
Referring to their meetings on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, she said that India’s digitization success was to be appreciated.
“There is certainly a lot of appreciation. Indeed, with a sense of amazement that India could pull it off in such a short period of time, it was the digital applications that succeeded, how people have adapted to it, now it’s expanding digitally, it’s not just about pay, it’s also about health, it’s also about education, it’s also about health-related vaccinations … COVIN and so on,” she said.
“So India Stacks is both the point of admiration and the way they’ve evolved quickly, but even better that we’ve been able to spread them out and reach saturation levels, and lots of them. And that it remains a shared public good is also recognized,” added Sitharaman.
Opening her meeting with the President of the World Bank, the Finance Minister mentioned that the World Bank has been a valuable partner of the G20 since its inception and India looks forward to working closely with the World Bank during the upcoming G20 presidency.
Sitharaman mentioned that during his presidency, India would like the G20 to explore the potential for multilateral development banks to improve climate finance through the use and brokerage of resources.
Impressed by the rapid and deep penetration of India’s financial inclusion and digitization initiatives among the poor, Malpass assured the finance minister to bring this up to other finance ministers as a way for governments to help their poor leapfrogs in these challenging times.
