Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman met the chief executive officers of Mastercard, Accenture, Deloitte, and FedEx in Washington DC. They discussed a range of issues including setting up R&D centres in India, upskilling talent, training and digitisation of small businesses, climate action, and financial inclusion.
Miebach Micheal, CEO of Mastercard told Sitharaman that Mastercard has set up huge data centres in India and is focused on training and digitisation of small businesses.
Sitharaman talked about the government’s commitment to digital financial inclusion with a focus on women and SMEs through world-class and indigenously developed technology solutions. She also spoke about using lessons from India’s financial inclusion programmes to develop global solutions.
Sitharaman attended the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ministerial meeting in Washington DC, conducted alongside the 2022 spring meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This meeting focussed on ministers’ providing strategic direction, by endorsing the FATF’s strategic priorities for 2022-24, and reinforcing ministers’ commitment to ensuring suitable funding for the delivery of the strategic priorities which are strengthening the FATF global network, FATF systems of mutual evaluations, enhancing international beneficial ownership transparency, increasing capabilities to more effectively recover criminal assets, leveraging digital transformation, and ensuring sustainable funding for FATF strategic priorities.
During the meeting, the FM reaffirmed India’s commitment to fighting money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing and acknowledged and appreciated FATF for their work on beneficial ownership transparency, asset recovery, and the role of the FATF global network in safeguarding the global financial system.
