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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has urged multilateral financial institutions to increase funding especially to low and middle income countries to prepare them to deal with pandemic situations in the future. She said that low income and middle income countries do not have enough resources and need global support to face challenges.

The minister stated that increased funding would be needed from multilateral development banks. Resilient and Sustainability Trust (RST) being created by the IMF must keep pandemic preparedness in mind. Therefore, she said the principle being agreed upon investment, looking at addressing fairness, and also financing modalities being well established so that they have inclusivity, transparency and equity in mind. The proposed $50 billion-worth RST's central objective is to provide affordable long-term financing to support countries as they tackle structural challenges.

Stressing that the committee appointed by the G20 has done commendable work in giving a roadmap for fund mobilisation, she said the gap can be filled with other means, including through Official Development Assistance (ODA). She said the World Health Organisation (WHO) needed to expand its capacity and mobilise global resources, and structural bottlenecks would have to be addressed to bring down the impact a pandemic might have.