World Bank President David Malpass has offered to work with India to bring its successful digitization efforts to other countries so they can also benefit, said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Speaking to Indian reporters on Saturday at a press conference near the end of her trip to Washington where she attended the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Ms Sitharaman said there was a demand extended to India to show how India people have accepted the deepening of digital applications.

“In fact, today when I met with World Bank President David Malpass, he said you should now show the deepening of digital applications in India and how ordinary people have accepted it,” Ms. Sitharaman said after meeting Malpass at World Bank Headquarters here.

He said he would be happy on the World Bank side to work with India to be able to take it to other parts of the world. It’s not just the World Bank, but all the bilateral people I’ve had have been praising India’s digital achievements,” Ms. Sitharaman said in response to a question on the matter. .

Referring to her meetings on the sidelines of IMF and World Bank annual meetings, she said that India’s digitization success was certainly highly appreciated.

“There’s definitely a lot of appreciation. In fact, with a sense of amazement that India was able to do it in such a short time, it was the digital apps that succeeded, how people adapted to it. And the way at all levels, now digital is deployed, it’s not just payment, it’s also health, it’s also education, it’s also health-related vaccination… COVIN and so on,” she said.

“So the Indian stacks are both the point of admiration and the way they’ve grown rapidly, but even better, that we’ve been able to spread them and get to saturation level and a lot of them. And that ‘it is kept as a common public good, is also recognised,’ Ms Sitharaman added.

Earlier in her meeting with the President of the World Bank, the Minister of Finance mentioned that the World Bank has been a valued partner of the G20 since its inception and that India looks forward to working closely with the World Bank during the next presidency of the G20.

Ms. Sitharaman mentioned that during her presidency, India would like the G20 to explore the potential of multilateral development banks to enhance climate finance by mobilizing and intermediating resources.

Impressed by the rapid and deep penetration of India’s financial inclusion and digitalization initiatives among the poor, Malpass assured the finance minister to pitch it to other finance ministers as a way for governments to help their poor to take the leap in these difficult times.