Sitharaman calls for efficient, equitable vaccine distribution

New Delhi: Indian Finance Minister called the G20 member nations for swift, efficient and equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines across the globe to help a worldwide recovery, Asian News International reported.

On Thursday, the minister was addressing the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in a virtual meeting.

The need to deal with the gaps in the world's preparedness against pandemics and G20 Joint Finance and Health Task Force should channel in that direction, she said.

Finance Minister Sitharaman further shared insight on India's policy response and said that recovery measures have to be set up on a long term basis. She recommended dealing with the structural bottlenecks so that pandemics effects could be diminished and resilience could be built.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired Union Cabinet had approved the formation of a G20 Secretariate with its reporting structures. It will be responsible for the implementation of total policy decisions and arrangements needed to drive India's upcoming G20 Presidency. India will host the Presidency of the G20, the premier forum for international economic cooperation, from December 1, 2022, to November 2023.

The G20 Secretariate is formed to deal with work relating to substantiative, knowledge, content, technical, media security and logical aspects of India's G20 Presidency. The Secretariat will be manned by staff from the Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Finance and other ministries, departments and domain knowledge experts. The Secretariat will be operational till February 2024.