World Bank Prez Jim Yong Kim to visit India tomorrow

New Delhi, June 27

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim will arrive here tomorrow on a two-day visit to explore knowledge and financing opportunities, as also to understand India’s efforts on renewable energy and nutrition.

“I am very impressed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reforms, and on this trip I want to explore how the World Bank could provide knowledge and financing to advance his government’s priorities. We will do all we can to best support India’s ambitious development agenda,” a World Bank statement quoted Kim as saying.

India is the world’s fastest growing economy and also home to 26 per cent of the global extreme poor, the World Bank president said, adding “This means India has a great opportunity to make strong and sustained inroads to reducing poverty and to help lead the world in ending extreme poverty by 2030.”

During his visit, Kim will meet Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi.

The statement added that during his visit Kim will seek Indian government’s help in dealing with endemic problems like malnutrition and reiterate the Bank’s strong support to India’s stated commitments to increase its reliance on renewable energy sources.

“Prime Minister Modi’s goal of making India the human resources capital of the world will succeed only if malnutrition is addressed immediately and ambitiously. India has made significant progress over the past few years in reducing the levels of malnutrition in the country, which unfortunately still remain high,” the World Bank statement said quoting Kim.

“India has taken on a global leadership role in solar power generation with its visionary plan to scale up renewable power generation by 175 GW by 2022. In my meetings with Prime Minister Modi and Finance Minister Jaitley, I plan to discuss how the current engagements can be expanded to meet these targets,” it added.

The statement said Kim will visit an anganwadi (nutrition) center in New Delhi, a part of the government’s Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS) to experience the magnitude of the challenges that the government is facing in tackling malnutrition. —PTI