Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who returned from his four-day U.S. visit, on Monday said he had fruitful bilateral discussions with US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Ministers of others countries.
“I had fruitful discussions in Washington. I had series of bilateral meetings not only with US Treasury Secretary but also with Korean Finance Minister,” Mr. Mukherjee told reporters in New Delhi.
He was in the U.S. to attend the IMF-World Bank annual spring meetings, which among other things, deliberated on increasing resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with euro zone debt crisis.
“I had bilateral meeting with finance ministers of neighbouring countries Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. These are bilateral relations and we take this opportunity of sharing our views, our perceptions,” Mr. Mukherjee said.
IMF has been seeking more capital from the member states to increase its fire-power and effectively deal with global financial problems, especially the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, which is threatening the global economic recovery.
At the Spring meetings, the countries pledged to increase the resources of IMF by over $430 billion, almost doubling the fund bank’s lending capacity.
In addition to Geithner, Mr. Mukherjee also held bilateral discussions with South Korean Minister of Strategy and Finance Bahk Jaewan.
Mr. Geithner, during the bilateral talks, is reported to have raised the issue of amendment to the Income Tax Act with retrospective effect to bring into tax net Vodafone-type deals.
Mr. Mukherjee was also accompanied by Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu, Economic Affairs Secretary R Gopalan and RBI Governor D Subbarao.
