World Bank’s president David Malpass said on Wednesday that there is now a faster global growth driven primarily by the US, China and India, reported PTI. He made the statement at the start of the Spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

“There’s the good news that there is faster global growth driven primarily by the US, China, and India, having strong rebounds,” Malpass told reporters on Wednesday.

Also read: ‘There is light at the end of the tunnel’: IMF on recovery after global recession

In its World Economic Outlook released on Tuesday, the IMF forecast India’s economy to grow by 12.5% in the present financial year. It predicted China’s economy to grow by 8.4% and the US by 6.4%.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions induced by it, economies across the world were severely hit. The global economy contracted by 3.3% in 2020.

However, in its latest forecast, the IMF predicts the world economy to grow by 6% this year.

Also read: India bounced back big way but not out of woods: World Bank

Inequality

Despite the positive projection regarding global economic growth, the World Bank president voiced concern over the growing inequality due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said there was a concern of inequality in terms of vaccinations and median income that’s not going up very fast for some countries.

“But there’s also the concern that there’s inequality. Inequality in terms of vaccinations, in terms of median income that’s not going up very fast for some of the countries and may even be going down. There’s the interest rate differential, where poor countries face much higher interest rates and they haven’t gone down the way global interest rates have done,” he said.

Malpass added that there was inequality in terms of the bankruptcy process, which is not available to sovereign countries, so the poorer countries do not have a way out of these very heavy debt burdens.

“There’s also inequality in terms of access to credit with a lot of the stimulus going to the upper end, and people that don’t have pristine credit ratings, for example, or small businesses, new entrants, women that would like to start a business, having great difficulty getting credit,” he said.

According to Malpass, the World Bank and the IMF are working closely together to have successful implementation of the G20’s Common Framework to deal with unsustainable debt situations.

There was a call for the private sector to provide comparable treatment with regard to debt, he said.