India could be hit if Brexit worsens: World Bank

Written By Praveena Sharma | Updated: Jul 01, 2016, 07:55 AM IST

The country has been "very resilient" in the aftermath of Britain's exit from the EU, says its chief; WB to give $1 billion loan for development of India's solar sector

The World Bank (WB) president Jim Yong Kim said India has been "very resilient" to Brexit till now but if more events were to unfold and aggravate the current uncertainty prevailing in the global markets then India could get affected.

"What it (Brexit) means for the developing countries is that access to capital can really become difficult. Now again, India has been very resilient to what's happening in Brexit. (But) If there are more events that create more uncertainty then everyone will be affected including India," Kim said at the end of his two day visit to India.

He said Brexit had led to money making its way to safe havens like gold, US treasury bonds, Japanese Yen, German bonds and other such assets.

The World Bank chief also said international lending organisation would like to offer more capital to India and China, but for that there was a need to increase capital.

"We are very grateful that India continues to reach out to us and we are very grateful that we have the opportunity to bring the best knowledge and low cost finance to countries like India. My expectation is that it'll (capital size in India) grow but in order to do that we're probably going to need capital increase. India has been the strongest proponent of capital increase at the World Bank group for quite some time. We're grateful to them for them," he said.

According to him, the demand for WB's expertise and capital had gone "through the roof" because of higher demand from commodity-exporting countries and other global factors.

Kim said the direction of the voice and quota reforms in WB, for which India has been strongly pitching, could become clear within a year.

"Our hope is that within the next year we'll know where we are going on all those issues," he told the reporters.

WB officials said the stressed assets issue in the domestic banking sectors was being given the "right attention" by the government and RBI had also ensured adequate provisioning by banks.

They said the railways projects in which they were involved were on track and some new projects were also in the pipeline.

In a move that could bring India closer to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's target of 100 gigawatt (gw) solar power by 2022, the World Bank Group on Thursday inked a pack with the International Solar Alliance (ISA), comprising of 121 countries led by India, to provide $1 billion for investment and lending in the domestic solar energy sector.