India is focused on both growth and job, says Ajay Banga

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic caused extreme learning losses, World Bank President Ajay Banga said on Wednesday, underlining the need to devise a mechanism to prevent such situations before the next pandemic hits. "We have a real challenge for the generation which was undergoing schooling during the pandemic," Banga said in New Delhi. Talking to reporters after meeting Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Banga said he discussed issues related to G20 and cooperation between the World Bank and India. "We talked about everything we did at G20 and how the meeting went. We talked about what the world bank and India can do further as well as G20 part of it. India is the largest market for the World Bank in terms of our portfolio here. There is a lot of interest here," he said.

Banga said, India came out of pandemic relatively stronger and noted maintaining the momentum in economy will be the best way to tackle poverty and buoy growth. The best way to tackle poverty is growth in jobs, said Banga. India came out of pandemic relatively stronger, says World Bank chief Ajay Banga. India, he noted, is focused on both growth and job.On world economy outlook, the World Bank President said there is more risk on the downside in terms of a slowdown in the early part of next year. However, he said, “India gets a lot of its GDP from domestic consumption. So even if the world would slowdown for a few months, India has a natural cushion by the fact that it is more domestic consumption oriented.” he said.