India to focus on MDBs, climate finance during G20 presidency, says Sitharaman

India is preparing to focus on several key issues like multinational development banks debt situation and climate change during its G20 presidency next year Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman saidDuring the just concluded annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank the Indian delegation including Sitharaman briefed finance ministers and central bank governors of G20 countries on Indias priorities as the president of the grouping of the worlds major economiesIndia will assume the presidency of the G20 for a year from December 1 2022 to November 30 2023We had an informal breakfast with G20 members There was a very positive and cooperative mood Unhesitatingly I found all of them extending cooperation and saying Indias year as president should take on issues and were all here to support and cooperate with you And that was expressively said Sitharaman said in response to a question here on SaturdayAlso read Despite global headwinds Indian economy will stay on course Nirmala SitharamanThe minister said she did not lay out the agenda in detail but spoke about the broad issues that India will be interested inIn no particular order I wish to say that we will certainly be wanting the G20 members to discuss how the multilateral development banks can better leverage the endowment that they have she saidAlso think in terms of getting other sources through which their finances can improve because one they have to be more nimble in reaching out for development funding and two they have to better effectively deploy the resources that they haveSo that will certainly be one of the things that we will be working out and how that becomes an agenda point and how specifically were going to try to make it is subject to taking inputs from everybody she addedSitharaman said the debt situation is also likely to be on the agendaI know solutions were arrived at during the pandemic the sustainability initiatives Now that period is gone Now the vulnerabilities of more countries are coming out many middleincome countries themselves are at high risk she saidThe common framework has not really delivered as much as it was expected to So that will certainly be one of the issues that India would want the members to discuss during its presidency and have some kind of outcome she saidThird well be talking about climate finance we think a large part of this debate will have to be within the UNFCCC So environmentrelated issues should emanate from there Certainly there will be a role for the multilateral bodies she saidSitharaman is on a sixday visit to the US which began on October 11 Besides attending the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank she held bilateral meetings with her counterparts from several countries during the visitThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever