India in a position to weather financial storm: WB

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Washington, October 9:: Coming in support of the claims made by the Manmohan Singh Government on Wednesday, the World Bank on Thursday said India is in a position to weather the global financial turmoil, though the country will witness some slowdown in its economic growth.

"India like China has been growing very well. I think you will see some slowdown, but for a number of reasons I hope India will be in a position to weather the storm. There are issues that the government is focusing on... The (Indian) Prime Minister is keenly aware of those topics," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said.

Zoellick's statement came a day after India's Cabinet came out with almost similar statement. on Wednesday, the Cabinet had stated that the Indian economy has the capacity and the resilience to face the global financial crisis.

"We have enough instruments to ensure the stability of the Indian financial system and we will continue to provide credit and other support for the growth of the economy," Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said reading out the statement.

Indian economy grew at 9 per cent last fiscal and 7.9 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal and the Finance Minister had expressed confidence that for the whole of the year the economic growth rate would be close to 8 per cent.

Ahead of annual meeting with the International Monetary Fund, Zoellick, said he had talked about certain economic issues to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the UNGA meet and will meet Chidambaram in a couple of days.

Referring to World Bank's projects in India, Zoellick said the multilateral agency has found that the country is keen on sectors like health and education.

The Bank will not only provide resources but the expertise to help the country in the required areas, he added.

Stressing on the innovative ways of funding, Zoellick said "There continues to be an interest in innovative ways to finance and develop infrastructure. There are other private partnerships in this...it important because at times India has had inflationary issues form bottlenecks."