Indian dependence upon IDA of WB (low interest / interest free) loans has steadily decreased since 2014 and now it is measly 30-40 million dollars each year. We still owe IDA of WB loans of tune of 13.5 billion dollars
but we are hardly taking any further loans under this program.
The International Development Association (IDA) credits are public and publicly guaranteed debt extended by the World Bank Group. IDA provides development credits, grants and guarantees to its recipient member countries to help meet their development needs. Credits from IDA are at concessional...
financesone.worldbank.org
If you look at IBRD of WB, which provides loans at SOFR + Variable spread rate, each year we take about 2-3 billion dollars of loan. We get these loans at about 5.0-5.8% per annum(4-5% SOFR and 0.8% spread). Cheaper but not really very cheap. Comparatively, Indian government bonds pays about 6.5%.
Discover summaries of key information from IBRD and IDA. This includes details on Projects, lending, net flows, procurement notices, contract awards.
financesone.worldbank.org
This saves us about 300 million dollars a year in interests for an average lending of 3 billion dollars a year.
Sure this is not nothing, but this is also not something that India can be threatened with.
Leverage that World Bank has on us, today is bare minimal. And on the question of sovereignty, it will not mess with us. We can live without them but if we quit shares of world bank or worse sell them to China, it would not go well with America and the west. So, no. World bank is not going to give us trouble on likes of Pakistan which do not hold any value for American and west now.
I say, India should have abrogated that treaty. World bank is replaceable by a number of other institutions and if nothing than by government bonds.