Finance Minister meets AIIB President, urges her to scale up investment

New Delhi, Mar 2 (PTI) Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday met new President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Zou Jiayi, and underscored the need to scale up investments in member countries.

Both leaders discussed strengthening the India-AIIB partnership, the finance ministry said in a post on X.

Representing the second largest shareholder in AIIB, Sitharaman emphasised the need to scale up investments in AIIB member countries, particularly low-income countries, through various innovative financing and non-financing instruments.

India is the second-largest shareholder in AIIB with 8.5 per cent after China, whose holding is 30.5 per cent.

The Finance Minister also highlighted India's continued focus on infrastructure-led growth under the Union Budget, and both discussed the importance of enhanced collaboration with AIIB through early upstream services in the infrastructure sector in India.

Among other issues, she stressed AIIB's role in developing the capital markets, expediting the approvals of projects in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and setting up a regional office in India, given the scale of AIIB's operations here. PTI DP DRR