Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday offered to share India’s vaccine distribution platform CoWIN with other nations for free, saying that humanitarian needs outweigh commercial benefits.
Participating on the second day of the ongoing G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, Sitharaman shed light on India’s successful experience in integrating technology with inclusive service delivery during the pandemic.
In a series of tweets, the Finance Ministry revealed the government’s decision.
“FM Smt. @nsitharaman shared how #CoWIN application has efficiently supported scale and scope of our vaccination and #India has made this platform freely available to all countries given our firm belief that humanitarian needs outweigh commercial benefits,” a tweet said.
During the meeting, discussions of finance ministers were focused on policies for economic recovery, sustainable finance, and international taxation.
“In policies for recovery session, FM discussed 3 catalysts of economic recovery- #Digitalization #ClimateAction & #SustainableInfrastructure; shared India’s successful experience in integrating technology with inclusive service delivery during the pandemic,” another tweet stated.
Prior to this, Dr R S Sharma, Chairman of the empowered group for COVID-19 vaccine administration, had said that over 50 countries were interested in CoWIN to run their country’s vaccination drive. In five months, Sharma said, CoWIN has grown to handle over 30 crore registrations and vaccinations for Indian citizens.
“We are telling the world how this system can work and how we are ready to share an open-source software with any country free of cost. There have been huge interests, starting from Canada, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Uganda,” Sharma said at the Public Health Summit 2021 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy)
