India ready to take larger share in World Bank: Finance Minister

In his meeting with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Jaitley acknowledged the long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship between the World Bank Group and India since its inception and called on the Bank to work together with the member countries to explore innovative financing solutions. 

Jaitley arrived here from Canada to attend the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He also appreciated the support of the World Bank to the many significant achievements of India in its development process, especially in the six priority areas identified by the Prime Minster for Multilateral Development Banks’ assistance, a statement released by the Indian Embassy here said. “While discussing the policy issues related to the World Bank Group, he indicated India’s strong support for the capital increase and its readiness to take a larger share than the dynamic formula,” it said. 

The World Bank uses a dynamic formula, using economic weight (based on GDP) and development impact, to determine countries’ shareholding and thus voting power in the Bank. Jaitley also emphasised that the World Bank Group should work together with the member countries to explore innovative financing solutions, the media release said. 

The Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland also met the Finance Minister. He interacted with several US State Department officials during a reception hosted in his honour. Separately, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das held a bilateral meeting with US Treasury Under-Secretary Nathan Sheets. After exchanging notes on the state of their respective economies, both sides took stock of the work done on technical cooperation on NIIF, public debt management and municipal bonds and agreed to expedite progress on these issues. 

During the course of their interaction, Das also highlighted the sustained rapid growth of Indian economy and its ambitious reform agenda including the landmark Goods and Services Tax, passage of the recent national bankruptcy law and liberalisation of foreign direct investment. 

Indian banks are vulnerable to further decline in profits as they face slow credit growth and elevated non-performing assets, IMF has said, calling for “additional and more timely action” to deal with the problem of bad loans. “Banking systems are vulnerable to further declines in growth or profits, particularly in countries at later stages of the credit cycle (such as India), where slowing credit growth and risks from elevated levels of non-performing loans are most acute,” said the International Monetary Fund’s Global Financial Stability report. Gross NPAs of public sector banks have surged from 5.43 per cent (Rs 2.67 lakh crore) of advances in 2014-15 to 9.32 per cent (Rs 4.76 lakh crore) in 2015-16. IMF said bank loan-loss reserves have fallen short of the expected loss on non-performing loans under the current debt-at-risk in India.