PM Modi lands World Bank's record 1 trillion dollars loan for mega solar power project

The World Bank on Thursday signed an agreement with India-led International Solar Alliance (ISA) to mobilise investments worth $1 trillion by 2030 to help fund projects to increase solar energy use around the world.

The agreement, establishing the World Bank Group as a financial partner for 121-nation ISA, was signed here in the presence of visiting World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and New and Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal.

The ISA was launched at the Paris United Nations Climate Change Conference in November by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande.

WHAT ALL DOES THE AGREEMENT INCLUDE?

As part of the agreement, the Bank will develop a roadmap to mobilise financing for development and deployment of affordable solar energy, and work with other multilateral development banks and financial institutions to develop financing instruments to support solar development.

On the occasion, the multilateral lender also announced that it planned to provide more than $1 billion to support India's initiative to expand solar energy generation.

WHY IS THE MOVE A GRAND INVESTMENT FOR WORLD BANK?

The solar investments for India combined would be the Bank's largest financing of solar energy projects for any country in the world to date, it said.

India's plans to virtually triple the share of renewable energy by 2030 will both transform the country's energy supply and have far-reaching global implications in the fight against climate change.

JIM YONG KIM IS ON-BOARD

"The World Bank Group will do all it can to help India meet its ambitious targets, especially around scaling up solar energy," Jim Yong Kim said.

The Indian government and the World Bank signed another agreement on Thursday for the $625 million Grid Connected Rooftop Solar Program. The project will finance the installation of at least 400 MW of solar Photovoltaic (PV) installations.

"The development of a $200 million Shared Infrastructure for Solar Parks Project under a public-private partnership model is also under preparation," the Bank said in a release here.

INDO-WORLD BANK CAMARADERIE

India is the largest client of the World Bank Group. According to it, the group lent around $4.8 billion to India between 2015 and 2016. As of June 2016, the Bank's total commitments stood at $27 billion across 95 projects.

At the end of May 2016, the Bank's private sector arm, International Finance Corporation (IFC), had an India portfolio of 248 projects, "amounting to a committed and disbursed exposure of approximately $4.4 billion", the statement said.

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