Indian economic growth is most likely to be strong at 8.9 percent in the current financial year, reflecting the country’s strong resilience and rapid recovery, said Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman.
Sitharaman also stated his belief that India would continue to reach a high level of growth in the next financial year, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement. Overcoming the 7th annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the New Development Bank (NDB) through a video conference, he underlined the importance of multilateralism and the spirit of global cooperation for economic recovery.
The Minister acknowledged that NDB had succeeded in strengthening himself as a reliable development partner for developing country markets and appreciated the progress made to establish the Indian regional office in the City of Gujarat. NDB will play a significant and meaningful role in the development of its member countries in the coming decades, he added.
Because of the ongoing Pandemic, the NDB Annual Meeting held by India this year, was held in virtual mode, said the statement, adding this year’s theme for the annual meeting was ‘NDB: Optimizing the impact of development’, which is very relevant in the current global economic scenario .
Highlighting that India celebrated 75 years of independence this year, the Minister of Finance said that Indian economic growth in the current financial year was strong and estimated at 8.9 percent which was the highest among all large economies,” he said.
The meeting was also attended by the Governor/Governor of Alternative Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa and members who had just joined members of Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Founded by BRICS Group of Country (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in July 2014, NDB began operations a year later with initial capital subscribed to USD 50 billion with total capital paid USD 10 billion.
The purpose of the bank is to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRIC and the economy of other developing countries and developing countries to complete the existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global growth and development.
The bank was operational in 2015, with its head office in Shanghai, China. Last year, NDB expanded its membership to include four countries – Bangladesh, UAE, Egypt and Uruguay. NDB has so far approved 21 India projects with a total of USD 7.1 billion.