Washington, DC

October 7, 2016

 

Shri Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister along with Shri Shaktikanta Das, Secretary (EA) participated in the 2016 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings Plenary on October 7, 2016, which was held at the historic DAR Constitution Hall, Washington DC.

 

2. The Hon’ble FM was a keynote speaker at the Annual Meeting Flagship event organized by the World Bankon the issue of ‘Financial Inclusion and De-risking’. During the event, the FM highlighted the various steps like leveraging digital IDs (Aadhar), expanding access networks (PM Jan-DhanYojana) and digitizing financial benefit  transfers (including Insurance and Pension schemes), taken by the Government of India which have led to the tremendous progress towards achievement of the universal financial inclusion goal during the last couple of years.

 

3. The Finance Minister also held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Sri Lanka, China,and Iran. The discussions focused on the areas of mutual co-operation and commonality of positions in various multilateral fora.

 

4. Secretary (EA) participated in the World Bank Development Committee meeting, during the afternoon, wherein he spoke about the wide-ranging economic reforms undertaken in India which are transforming the business environment for Indian and global investments.During the discussion, he highlighted upon the impressive increases in FDI, $100 billion solar energy investment programme, Clean India (Swachh Bharat) Program, International Solar Alliance, Make-In-India, transformation of the taxes regime, passage of GST bills, bankruptcy code, as some of the major initiatives recently undertaken.

 

5. On the side-lines of the Fund Bank meetings, Secretary (EA) also met the president of the New Development Bank and the CEOs of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and Scotia Bank.

 

6. The Finance Minister is currently on official tour to Washington to attend the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and other associated meetings. He is accompanied by Dr. Urijit Patel, Governor RBI, Mr. Shaktikanta Das, Secretary Economic Affairs, Dr. Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor and other officials.