India’s G20 presidency can contribute immensely to concrete progress on the global regulation of crypto assets, climate finance and debt relief, International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) first deputy managing director Gita Gopinath said on Thursday.

In a video posted on Twitter, Gopinath said any firming up of globally-accepted regulatory standards for crypto assets in 2023 would be a “concrete outcome”. Such standards have become necessary, she said, especially after the recent crypto meltdown. She is in India to participate in various G-20 deliberations. India has been drumming up support for a global strategy to regulate crypto, given the cross-border nature of such transactions.

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She also highlighted the need for further bolstering the mechanism to address debt problems being faced by poor countries in the wake of the pandemic.

“We have a large number of low-income countries that are in debt distress. While we have the G-20 common framework to help with debt resolution, we absolutely need to improve the strength of the mechanism and to get much more timely resolution,” Gopinath said.

According to an IMF statement last month, the total cost of providing assistance to the 39 low-income countries that have been found eligible or potentially eligible for debt relief under the enhanced HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) Initiative was estimated to be about $76 billion in end-2017 net present value terms. The debt levels of these countries have exacerbated after the pandemic.

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About 44% of the funding for debt relief comes from the IMF and other multilateral institutions, and the remaining from bilateral creditors.

Gopinath conceded that developing countries need more finances to be able to adopt climate-mitigation steps. “To have developing countries adapt to climate change, to contribute to climate mitigation, they will need much higher financing. And that’s a third area where concrete progress can be made (at the G20 meetings),” Gopinath said.

India’s G20 presidency comes at a time of heightened challenges for the world economy, including the devastation caused by the pandemic, the Ukraine conflict and resultant surge in food and energy security concerns, growing debt distress, inflationary pressures and monetary tightening.

The first of a series of G20 Finance Track meetings under India’s presidency earlier this week deliberated on growing risks to global economic outlook and “immediate challenges of global inflation, food and energy security” and climate change.