Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has told the World Bank’s private sector investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to increase its lending to India to more than $2 billion in the next two years and to $3-3.5 billion over the next three-four years.
IFC managing director Makhtar Diop, who met the Minister in the capital on Monday, said that the corporation would adopt ‘a proactive approach’ to scale up its India investments and will extend financing to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to bolster the country’s ‘effort to become a manufacturing hub’.
Mr. Diop, who briefed Ms. Sitharaman on IFC’s current lending footprint in India, also emphasised the potential of ‘looking into sub-national financing for sustainable growth, and mobilise financing for women entrepreneurs’.
“FM Sitharaman appreciated IFC’s mission and reiterated India’s expectation of a rise in IFC’s lending to India to $2-2.5 billion in the next 1-2 years and $3-3.5 billion in next 3-4 years,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement, adding that Mr. Diop ‘shared’ this sentiment.
