The Centre for Social and Economic Progress is delighted to invite you to a Seminar on the World Bank Bi-Annual Flagship Economic Reports: South Asia Development Update & India Development Update on Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm IST.

The World Bank’s October 2023 South Asia Development Update includes economic growth projections and explores pathways countries can take to accelerate growth, including opportunities afforded by the transition to sustainable energy sources. The World Bank’s India Development Update analyses the state of the Indian economy in addition to sharing economic trends and forecasts for India.

The World Bank’s Chief Economist for South Asia, Franziska Ohnsorge, and Senior Country Economist for India, Dhruv Sharma, will present the key findings of the reports followed by a panel discussion.

Welcome Address

Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP. He has been leading the climate change and sustainability research at CSEP, and has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic and social reforms in India, economic geography and financial inclusion. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. He has been the managing editor of the Journal of Emerging Market Finance and worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi.

Chair

AK Bhattacharya at present is the Editorial Director at Business Standard, a leading business newspaper of the country. He is based in New Delhi. He was born in 1956.

He has been an economic journalist for the last four decades. He has served as the Editor of Business Standard. Earlier, he was the Editor of The Pioneer and worked for The Financial Express and The Economic Times in different leadership roles. For many years, he has been writing a column, Raisina Hill, which appears in Business Standard and comments on government affairs, development issues and the economy. He is also a regular participant in economic policy discussions organised by different multi-media platforms. He is a distinguished fellow of Ananta Aspen Centre, a think tank with global affiliation, and a member of the Economic Affairs Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry. He is a member of several Track Two Strategic Dialogues held regularly between India and countries such as Singapore, South Korea, the United States and Bangladesh.

A former general secretary of Editors Guild of India, he won the Shriram Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism in 2017. He is the author of The Rise of Goliath: Twelve Disruptions That Changed India, published by Penguin in July 2019. His second book – India’s Finance Ministers: From Independence to Emergency (1947-1977) – was also published by Penguin in May 2023.

Presenters

Franziska Ohnsorge is the World Bank Chief Economist for South Asia. In this role, she is responsible for leading the research program on key economic issues in South Asia to inform the policy debate and World Bank lending. Before starting this position, she was the Manager at the Development Economics Vice Presidency where she spearheaded the flagship Global Economic Prospects report. Prior to joining the World Bank, Ohnsorge worked in the Office of the Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and at the International Monetary Fund. Her research has been featured in peer-reviewed journals as well as policy publications and has covered a wide range of topics in international macroeconomics and finance, including debt and financial crises, inflation and monetary policy, as well as growth and informal labor markets. Her work has been widely cited, including in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto.

Dhruv Sharma is a Senior Country Economist with the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment practice of the World Bank. He is the lead author of the “India Development Update” and will present key findings from the report including the growth outlook for the Indian economy. His work covers macroeconomic policy analysis and modelling, growth analysis, climate change economics and policy reform-based lending projects. His work also includes providing analytical support to the Ministry of Finance and finance departments at the state level. Previously, he worked in the World Bank’s Indonesia office, as well as with the Australian Treasury. He has a Bachelor’s in Economics (Hons) and PhD from the University of Sydney.

Discussants

Renu Kohli is a Senior Fellow at CSEP. She has research and practitioner experience on macroeconomic policies and issues. She has previously worked with the RBI, the IMF and think tanks including ICRIER and the Institute of Economic Growth. Her work has focused on financial sector liberalisation, capital flows and exchange rate management in emerging markets with a special India focus, international macroeconomic coordination, and recently, the macroeconomic impact of decarbonisation in India.

Amrita Goldar has over 15 years of experience working on energy, environment, and climate change projects for government and non-governmental clients. Many of her projects are with central government ministries and agencies (MoF, MoEF&CC, MoP, NITI, etc.) that shape India’s negotiation standpoint at international forums. Within ICRIER, she has worked on and led projects related to estimating the financial requirements for meeting India’s NDC commitments and adaptation needs, circular economy, sustainable EV battery supply chains, carbon-neutral steel, tourism and waste management links, municipal bonds for financing urban solar rooftop projects, climate change impacts on urban economic competitiveness, cost-benefit analysis of urban local public health interventions, MSMEs and sustainability standards, techno-economic analysis of various renewable energy technologies for telecom towers, and the impacts of rationalising fossil fuel subsidies in India. She recently completed a project in which she provided inputs for the Energy Transitions Working Group (ETWG) during India’s G20 and Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) Presidency in 2023.

Her ongoing projects include understanding battery waste management linkages to sustainable EV supply chains, designing a critical mineral policy for India, studying the impact of renewable and energy efficiency policies on jobs created in states, understanding climate disaster impacts and forecasting adaptation resourcing needs for India. She was awarded her PhD degree in Economics from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 2018. Her doctoral thesis focused on Bilateral Investment Agreements and their impact on India-bound FDI. She has numerous national and international publications to her credit.

Closing Remarks

Auguste Tano Kouamé took over as the World Bank’s Country Director for India, on August 1, 2022. A national of Côte d’Ivoire, he most recently served as the World Bank’s Country Director for the Republic of Türkiye. Prior to this, he served as Director in the World Bank Group’s Independent Evaluation Group. He also held positions as Practice Manager in the Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Practice of the World Bank, first in Latin America and Caribbean countries and then in the Middle East and North Africa regions (MENA).

He has held positions of Sector Manager for Economic Policy, Sector Leader, and Lead Economist in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit and served as acting Chief Economist for the MENA Region. He has also served as Assistant to the World Bank Group President. He was a core team member of the World Bank’s 1998/99 World Development Report on Knowledge for Development. Auguste holds a graduate degree in applied economics from ENSAE-Paris and a PhD in economics from EHESS-Paris. He also attended a program in Economic Management at Harvard University.

Please contact Manmeet Ahuja at MAhuja@csep.org for any enquiries and Trishna Wahengbam at TWahengbam@csep.org for media enquiries.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.