Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to India next week to attend Group of 20 finance minister meetings

WASHINGTON – Next week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will go to India to attend meetings of the Group of 20 finance ministers in Bengaluru. While there, she will talk about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has affected the global economy, as her trip will take place on the one-year anniversary of the invasion.

The Treasury Department says that Yellen’s schedule of events will start on Feb. 23, when she plans to give a speech about the economy while the U.S. and its allies help Ukraine defend itself against the invasion. She will also talk about improving the public digital infrastructure and changing the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank so that their investment needs are more focused on climate change.

This will be the first meeting of finance ministers since December, when India took over as chair of the Group of 20 leading economies. The Indian government has told the group that climate issues are the most important thing to work on.

A senior Treasury official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the secretary’s travel plans said that Yellen plans to ask member countries to cut their emissions and will raise money for climate finance projects to invest in developing countries’ infrastructure, agriculture, and renewable energy sources.

The official also said that part of the visit will be about Zambia’s big debt to China, which is $6 billion. China is Zambia’s biggest creditor.

In January, Yellen went to Zambia’s capital city, Lusaka, which is clearly dominated by Chinese financing. She did this in part to talk about the country’s huge debt to China. When Zambia missed a $42.5 million bond payment in November 2020, it was the first sovereign African country to do so since the coronavirus pandemic. Talks have been going on about how to deal with the amount of debt.

The G-20 is made up of the world’s 20 largest economies. Each year, the group’s agenda and priorities are set by a different member state.

India, which is currently the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, proposed phasing out all fossil fuels at a U.N. climate conference last November and stressed over and over again the need to change how the world pays for climate change.