PM Narendra Modi to address IMF conference on ‘Advancing Asia’ in March

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and India will co-host a high-level conference in New Delhi on March 11-13 to take stock of Asia’s strong economic performance, its increased resilience to shocks and the region’s ongoing economic policy challenges. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the conference as keynote speaker, as will IMF managing director Christine Lagarde. Finance minister Arun Jaitley will also attend.

‘Advancing Asia: Investing for the Future’ will bring together senior officials, corporate executives, academics, and civil society representatives from more than 30 countries spanning Asia and the Pacific.

The conference “provides a forum for Asia-Pacific leaders to discuss a region renowned for its economic successes over the past decades,” Lagarde said in a release.

“As Asia’s advanced, emerging market and developing economies move to the next stage of success, they face the key challenge of how to maintain and enhance the region’s high growth record while boosting jobs, reducing inequality, accelerating infrastructure and human capital development and implementing other growth-enhancing reforms," she said.

Key topics to be discussed at the conference will include the most effective drivers of growth; income inequality, demographic change, and gender; infrastructure investment; climate change; managing capital flows; and financial inclusion, an IMF statement said.

Other participants include Asian Development Bank president Takehiko Nakao, Indonesian finance minister Bambang Brodjonegoro and Zeti Akhtar Aziz, governor of Bank Negara Malaysia.