WASHINGTON (AP) — On the heels of a trip to Beijing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is again in India for the third time in 9 months, this time to fulfill finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations about international financial challenges just like the elevated menace of debt defaults facing low-income countries.

Yellen will use her time in Gandhinagar to attempt to foster warming relations between the U.S. and India. She additionally plans a cease in Hanoi, Vietnam, to deal with provide chain reliability, clear power transition and different issues of financial resilience.

Yellen’s objectives for her time in India: press for debt restructuring in growing international locations in financial misery, push to modernize international improvement banks to make them extra climate-focused and deepen the ever-growing U.S.-India relationship.

Yellen’s frequent stops within the nation sign the significance of that relationship at a time of of tensions with China.

India’s longstanding relationship with Russia additionally will loom because the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine continues regardless of U.S. and allied international locations’ efforts to sanction and economically bludgeon Russia’s economic system. India has not taken half within the efforts to punish Russia and maintains power commerce with that nation regardless of a Group of Seven agreed-upon price cap on Russian oil, which has seen some success in slowing Russia’s economic system.

Still, the U.S. more and more depends on India and has courted its leaders.

President Joe Biden hosted a White House state visit honoring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June, designed to focus on and foster ties. The two leaders pronounced the U.S.-India relationship by no means stronger and rolled out new enterprise offers between the nations.

Raymond Vickery Jr., a coverage skilled on U.S.-India relations on the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated Yellen’s coming to India shortly after visiting China is significant in that Indian officers “are going to want to know in great detail what happened in the meetings with her Chinese counterparts and see where it fits with their perspective on economic relations with China.”

Story continues

“They’re going to want to know whether or not the United States is serious about moving some of its sourcing activity from China to India.”

A senior Treasury official, talking on situation of anonymity to preview Yellen’s journey, stated there was hope that debt remedies for Ghana and Sri Lanka will probably be mentioned and accomplished shortly on the conferences.

Sri Lanka and Ghana defaulted on their worldwide money owed final 12 months, roughly two years after Zambia defaulted. And greater than half of all low-income international locations face debt misery, which hurts their long-term means to perform and develop.

Last month, Zambia and its authorities collectors, together with China, reached a deal to restructure $6.3 billion in loans, on the sidelines of a world finance summit in Paris.

The settlement covers loans from international locations corresponding to France, the U.Okay., South Africa, Israel and India in addition to China — Zambia’s largest creditor at $4.1 billion of the whole. The deal might present a roadmap for how China will handle restructuring offers with different nations in debt misery.

Yellen’s journey comes shortly after she spent every week in China, assembly the nation’s finance ministry and discussing mutual commerce restrictions and nationwide safety considerations.

Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow on the Hudson Institute, stated Yellen’s journey to India “is a reflection of a naturally developing alliance.”

“India has a great deal of tension with China — they have constant border disputes,” he stated.” And India wants to develop and has developed into sort of an Indian Ocean naval power, which is also a region that China wants to develop.”