Barely 9 months after the country made what is touted as a ?roles reversal? move by lending $10 billion to one of the Bretton Woods twins, International Monetary Fund (IMF), India has emerged as the top borrower from ADB, the international development finance institution ??whose mission is to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people??, during the calendar year 2010.
The country?s credit line to the IMF was considered as a moral booster and a precursor for India staking claim for a permanent seat in the UN?s Security Council along with the ?Big Five? ? China, Russian Federation, France, The US and the UK. The move had also gone a long way in boosting country?s image as an emerging market power house since IMF had bailed out India from a payment crisis in 1999, which had open the floodgates of reforms and openness in the economy.
According to numbers available with FE, India had cornered the lion share of the loans disbursed by the international lending agency in 2010 accounting for close to 23% of the total loans disbursed by ADB. As per the numbers, the country has received loan of $1,737.58 million out of the total loan of $7,693.23 million sanctioned by ADB during 2010. Bangladesh finished as a distant second with a loan of $1,249 million accounting for 16.24% of the total ADB loan, followed by China with $970.88 million or 12.62% of the outstanding loan amount.
Ironically, relatively poorer countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal received paltry sums from ADB as development loans. While Sri Lanka got $457.17 million or 5.94% of the loan during 2010, Pakistan got $270 million or 3.51% of the total credit line from ADB. Similarly, Nepal too got a negligible sum of $154.9 million or 2.01% of the total ADB credit line.
