The World Bank on Wednesday offered India up to $18 billion in financial support over the next three years while lavishly praising new right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “ambitious vision” for the country.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was elected in May with the biggest electoral majority in three decades on pledges to revive India’s sluggish economy, ousting the scandal-tainted, left-leaning Congress party.
Speaking at the end of a three-day visit to India, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim told reporters he was hugely impressed with Modi’s “comprehensive and extremely ambitious vision for the country”.
“I am more optimistic leaving (about India’s prospects) than when I arrived,” Kim said following talks with Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to discuss the new government’s development priorities.
