World Bank agrees to invest in Kerala after CM Pinarayi Vijayan meets Anna Bjerde

Thiruvananthapuram: In a development, World Bank officials agreed to make investments in Kerala's basic infrastructure sectors on Tuesday. The agreement came after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan met the Managing Director (operations) of the World Bank Anna Bjerde, in Washington DC.

The Chief Minister's Office in a statement said that discussions were held about the status of several projects, including the Rebuild Kerala initiative backed by the World Bank.

Earlier, a high-level team from World Bank had visited Kerala to review the various development and policy programmes being implemented in the state as part of the Rebuild Kerala initiative and had also held discussions with the CM, the statement said. The meeting held in Washington DC was in continuation of that, it said. 

Earlier, the Chief Minister met with the heads of Pfizer, the leading American pharmaceutical company. The meeting was held at the Marriott Markway Hotel in New York, where the Lok Kerala Sabha conference was held. 

The company's Chennai-based research unit is considering expanding to Kerala, thus preliminary discussions have been undertaken about this, according to the chief minister's office. Pfizer asked about Kerala's potential to contribute to pre-clinical research. The team also examined how to best utilize Kerala's research potential in the areas of biotechnology, bioinformatics, statistics, and applied mathematics, according to the Chief Minister's office. 

 Pfizer representatives also shared their interest in working with the Digital Science Park recently inaugurated by the Prime Minister. A delegation of Pfizer's top officials will visit the state by September. Besides the Chief Minister, Chief Secretary VP Joy, Principal Secretary Suman Billa, Dr. John Brittas MP, IT Secretary Dr. Ratan U Khelkar, Snehil Kumar Singh and Startup Mission CEO Anoop Ambika participated in the discussion.

• Pinarayi Vijayan
• world bank