Nirmala Sitharaman returns to India after a six day visit to the United States

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Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman returned to India after a successful 6 days (11-16 October 2022) visit to the United States of America. She was in America to attend the 46th Annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meeting held at Washington D.C. from 10-16 October 2022.

The minister also attended G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting. India will take over the chairmanship of the G-20 from Indonesia after a summit meeting in November 2022.

She also met the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and World Bank President David Malpass.

Annual Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group meeting

The Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group (WBG) normally meet once a year to discuss the work of their respective institutions. The Annual Meetings, which generally take place in September/October, have customarily been held in Washington for two consecutive years and in another member country in the third year.

The 2023 Annual meeting will be held in Marrakech, Morocco. 

The Annual Meetings include meetings of the Development Committee, the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the Group of Ten, the Group of Twenty-Four, and various other constituencies.

The Inaugural Meeting of the Boards of Governors was held in Savannah, Georgia, USA in March 1946. The first Annual Meetings were held in Washington in 1946.

International Monetary Fund and World Bank 

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank were set up in 1944 after an International conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States in 1944.

Both the international financial institutions are also called Bretton Woods twins or Bretton Woods’s sisters.

Both the institutions were set up to perform different functions.

The IMF was set up to provide loans to the member countries facing a balance of payment crisis.

The World Bank provides loans to the member countries for development purposes.

At present 189 countries are members of the IMF. Country which is a member of the IMF, automatically becomes a member of the World Bank.  

Both the institutions headquarters are at Washington D.C, United States of America 

World Bank Group

 The World Bank was initially called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).  It was set up to provide loans to the countries for economic development purposes. Later on the World Bank created new institutions according to the emerging different needs of the member countries. 

At present the World groups includes five institutions:

• International  Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD),
•  International Financial Corporation(IFC), 
• International Development Assistance (IDA), 
• Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and  
• International Center for Settlement of International Dispute (ICSID).