Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman held a bilateral meeting with AfDB President Masatsugu Asakawa on the sidelines of the AfDB’s annual meetings in Incheon, South Korea on Tuesday.
Finance Minister Nitmala Sitharaman meets AfDB President Masatsugu Asakawa, says India continues to be most important country for AfDB sovereign and non-sovereign operations
Finance Minister Nitmala Sitharaman met with AfDB President Masatsugu Asakawa on Tuesday and urged the multilateral funding agency to support India with more concessional climate finance as the country’s economic progress can have a positive impact enormous at regional and global levels.
During the bilateral meeting with the President here, Sitharaman said that India continues to be the most important country for AfDB’s sovereign and non-sovereign operations. She also expressed her support for the Asian Development Bank (AfDB) for innovative financing mechanisms aimed at strengthening the bank’s lending capacity.
She advised the AfDB to introspect and assess how the bank can effectively support developing member countries.
“FM Smt. @nsitharaman urged @ADB_HQ to support India with more concessional #ClimateFinance as India’s economic and development progress can have huge positive impact regionally and globally,” a tweet from the Ministry of Finance said. .
During the meeting, Asakawa reiterated the AfDB’s commitment to provide $100 billion in climate finance to its member countries and also thanked India for supporting the AfDB’s innovative climate finance mechanism in Asia and the Pacific.
Earlier today, the AfDB President announced the bank’s newest climate finance program: the Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and the Pacific (IF-CAP).
“The weather events we have experienced over the past 12 months are only going to increase in intensity and frequency, so we need to take bold action now. IF-CAP is an exciting and innovative program that will have real impact. And this is another example of how the AfDB serves as a climate bank for Asia and the Pacific,” he said.
The first partners of IF-CAP are Denmark, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
These partners are in talks with the AfDB to provide a range of project preparation grants as well as guarantees for parts of the AfDB’s sovereign loan portfolios. The reduced risk exposure created by the guarantees will allow the AfDB to free up capital to accelerate new lending for climate projects.
With a “US$1 in, US$5 out” model, the initial ambition of US$3 billion in guarantees could create up to US$15 billion in new loans for much-needed climate projects in Asia and the Pacific, it said. he declares.
Read all the latest news from India here
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)
