India urges ADB to focus on West Asia, South Asia
New Delhi, May 6: India has urged the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to focus more on the West and South Asia regions after successful East Asia interventions by the multilateral lender and has said there is no case for increasing cost of its loan instruments as it has no capital deficiency, an official statement said on Sunday.
In his intervention on Saturday at the ADB's annual meeting in Manila, Economic Affairs Secretary S.C. Garg also made a strong case for ADB to adopt "country systems" for procurements and environmental safeguards and called for increasing lending for the private sector in developing countries, a Finance Ministry release said here.
Garg, who is an Alternate Governor on the ADB Board, the ADB "strategy should focus more on West Asia and South Asia as interventions in East Asia are already done fairly well," the statement said.
"He emphasized that the private sector operations of ADB as envisaged in the strategy should be enhanced and there should be more focus on equity participation.
"He also stated that there is absolutely no case for increase of cost of of various loan instruments as there is no capital deficiency in ADB," it said.
"Garg also argued that there is a strong case for ADB to adopt Country Systems for procurements and environmental safeguards and called for concerted efforts towards increasing lending for the private sector in developing member countries," it added.
According to the statement, he also highlighted the need for taking into account the likely impact technical advancements such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, so that ADB can equip the member countries to reap maximum benefit.
The Indian delegation to the ADB also held bilateral meetings with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
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India focused on practical applications of AI to solve population-scale challenges: Vaishnaw
New Delhi (PTI): IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday said India is focused on practical applications of AI, including enterprise productivity, and solutions for population-scale challenges such as healthcare, agriculture, and climate change.
Speaking at a research symposium at the AI Impact Summit, the minister also expressed happiness over the strong participation and optimism shown by young people at an AI Expo on Tuesday.
He informed that about 2.5 lakh attendees, mostly under the age of 30, took part across the exhibition area.
"It was a phenomenal response when I interacted with the young minds. I was so surprised by the optimism that most of the young people expressed towards this opportunity which is coming for them," Vaishnaw said.
The minister said he was feeling hopeful for a totally new future for India and for the world.
"We, in India, are very focused on AI in the edge, AI for use cases, AI for solving real-world problems, AI for improving the productivity in the enterprises, for population-scale problems like healthcare, like agriculture, like climate change. These are things we are focussed on here in India. And the AI submit brings that opportunity," he said.
The minister asked participants of the symposium to come out with solid concrete suggestions on how to make AI safe. AI is a great tool and should be used for the benefit of humans.
The India AI Impact Summit, one of the country's largest global gatherings on artificial intelligence, has brought together policymakers, industry leaders and technology experts, and deliberations are on around AI innovation, governance and real-world applications in New Delhi.
