World Bank President Ajay Banga Gets Candid; Opens Up On How He Looks At India Today Economically

Picture : Twitter/ ANI

World Bank President Ajay Banga has said that he is more optimistic today about India economically than he has been for a long time and lauded the government’s initiatives towards digitization of infrastructure.

Indian-American Ajay Banga, who is in Gandhinagar in Gujarat to attend the third G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, also referred to IMF and World Bank predictions about the world getting a little challenging for a year or so and asserted that a forecast is not destiny.

In an exclusive interview with ANI on the sidelines of the meeting, Banga said digitisation has made it easier for people to access services and he is a “big fan” of it.

“You can’t just do digitization of lending without digitizing the infrastructure. What India has done over the last 15-20 years, it is digitising the infrastructure. And that is enabling all these terrific applications to be built, which makes it easier for people to access services online. So I’m a big fan of it,” he said.

“I am more optimistic today about India as a whole, economically, than I have been for a long time,” he added.

Banga is the first person of Indian origin to head either the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

“The fact is that the world economy is in a difficult place. It has outperformed what everybody thought. But it does not mean it won’t be more challenging. The IMF forecast, the World Bank forecast are that the world will get a little challenging for a year or so but as I said in my speech this morning, forecast is not equal to destiny. We can change destiny. And that’s what you should think about,” he added.

The World Bank President also stated that India has enormous opportunities for financing for cities. “…Nobody has ever done enough on everything,” Banga added.

Talking about private sector investment, Banga said that there is no easy answer to private sector capital.

“What I’m trying to do is to set up a private sector investment Lab,” he said.