Operationalise Global Infrastructure Hub, India tells G-20

India has called for early operationalisation of the Global Infrastructure Hub, which has been set up following the last G-20 Summit for the development of a knowledge sharing platform and to improve investment as sought by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Brisbane summit.

During his interventions at the G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Istanbul, Turkey on 9 and 10 February, India's minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha said a very high priority needs to be given to investment, including investment in infrastructure, to achieve G20's collective growth objective.

This, he said, should be done through taking policy measures to improve business environment, mobilisation of resources of multilateral banks and their technical expertise, facilitation of long term financing from institutional investors and use of new financial models to promote infrastructure as an asset class.

The minister also emphasised the need for improving the quality of public investment processes, including PPP models, to attract further investment which will act as a boost for growth of the economy and create the jobs we need.

In the discussions on the global economy, Sinha expressed concern over the unconventional monetary policies adopted by a number of advanced economies and emphasised the need for having an effective mechanism to deal with negative spillovers that may arise due to these policies or due to unexpected and disorderly withdrawal of these policies in future.

India called for strengthening the IMF through implementing the 2010 quota and governance reforms and creating an environment for multilateral swaps to overcome such negative impact.

The G20 ministers have in their communique agreed to carefully calibrate and clearly communicate their monetary policy settings, assess major risk scenarios in the global economy and cooperate to manage spillovers arising from domestic policies.

Sinha, who made the lead intervention on tax issues, very strongly advocated full and fast implementation of automatic exchange of information within the agreed timeframe and on a global scale, including by all financial centres. This would help India trace transactions of money illegally earned or stashed in foreign banks without paying appropriate taxes in the countries where those transactions took place. India also called for addressing the concerns of developing countries while implementing the base erosion and profit shifting initiative and preparation of toolkits to assist them for effective implementation.

On financial regulation, he said, it is critical to create an ecosystem for unlocking the domestic capital for funding start-ups on parity with the best centres. India has taken steps to promote domestic venture capitalists and looks forward to sharing best practices in this regard, he said.