AHMEDABAD: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Monday that the United States and India are among the closest friends in the world. and underlined that they values India’s G20 leadership.
Yellen noted that bilateral trade between the two countries hit an all-time high last year and it is expected to rise higher in the coming years. The visiting Treasury Secretary and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman jointly addressed the media here ahead of India-US discussions on the sidelines of G20 conference in Gandhinagar.
Sitharaman said PM Narendra Modi’s recent trip to the US and meeting with the US president have strengthened and energised bilateral ties. “We deeply cherish our bilateral relationship with India. Among the world’s closest allies are the US and India. The United States values India’s leadership during its G20 presidency, and we will keep working closely together.” Yellen said in a statement. The G20 is expected to make progress on significant issues including pandemics and climate change, she said.
“I’m hoping that we can make big progress through our talks, . I appreciate India’s demonstrated leadership on debt challenges as the G20’s current president, particularly your backing the initiatives to strengthen international debt restructuring process,” she said. She praised India’s emphasis on boosting the formation of multilateral development banks, or MDBs.
The MDBs’ vision, incentive structures, operational approaches, and financial capacity must all be changed in order for them to better address global challenges, she said. “We must use meetings like this to strengthen our coalition of shareholders that are working together to press for more ambitious and specific reforms,” she said. As per estimates, the measures now in place or being discussed as part of this process might allow MDBs to free up $200 billion over 10 years.
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World Bank president Ajay Banga has said he is optimistic about India and its economy now than he has been “in a long time”. On the sidelines of the third G20 Central Bank Governors meet, he showered praises on India for its digital infrastructure, saying he is a “big fan” of such initiatives taken by the world’s fifth largest economy. “I am more optimistic about India, as a whole, economically,” he said.