World Bank president Ajay Banga on Monday mentioned amid world challenges, he’s extra optimistic about India and its financial system now than he has been “in a long time”.

Talking to the media on the sidelines of the third G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors assembly right here, the first-ever Indian-American to go the highest world monetary establishment mentioned the world financial system is in a troublesome place. Banga (63) showered praises on India for its digital infrastructure, saying he’s a “big fan” of such initiatives taken by the world’s fifth largest financial system.

“I am more optimistic about India, as a whole, economically, than I have been for a long time. The fact is that the world economy is in a difficult place. It has outperformed what everybody thought. But it does not mean that it won’t be more challenging. The IMF forecast, the World Bank forecast are that the world will get a little challenging over the next year or so,” he mentioned on the Mahatma Mandir Convention Centre, the place the G20 assembly is being held.

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As per authorities knowledge launched in May 2023, India’s GDP progress beat all expectations with a 6.1 per cent growth within the March quarter of the final fiscal that helped push the annual progress price (in FY23) to 7.2 per cent.

“I said in the speech this morning (at G20 meet) that the forecast is not equal to destiny, we can change destiny. And that’s what you should think about,” said Banga when asked about his views on the Indian economy.

Praising India for the steps taken in recent times to build digital infrastructure, he said applications which were built around that framework are making people’s lives easier today.

Banga, who took over as president of the Washington-headquartered development lender in early June, noted that digitisation has allowed citizens to easily access multiple services online.

“You cannot simply do digitisation of lending with out digitising the infrastructure. What India has accomplished over the past 15-20 years, it’s digitising the infrastructure. That is enabling all of the terrific functions to be constructed, which make it simpler for individuals to entry providers on-line. So, I’m an enormous fan of that,” he mentioned.