The Feb. 22-25 meeting in the Nandi Hills summer retreat near Bengaluru, Karnataka state, is the first major event of India's G20 presidency and will be followed by a March 1-2 meeting of foreign ministers in New Delhi.

As global borrowing costs rise, India, whose neighbors Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh have all sought International Monetary Fund support in recent months, wants to put debt relief at the forefront of discussions at the finance talks.

It is drafting a proposal for G20 countries to help debtor nations badly hit by the economic impacts of the pandemic and the Ukraine war by asking big lenders, including China, to take a large haircut on loans, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

New Delhi also supports a push by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United States for the so-called Common Framework (CF), a G20 initiative launched in 2020 to help poor countries delay debt repayments, to be expanded to include middle-income countries, though China has resisted.

"We support exploring a possible extension of the CF to middle-income countries facing debt vulnerabilities," said a European Union paper, signaling its backing for such moves ahead of the meeting.

The World Bank said in December the world's poorest countries owed US$62 billion in annual debt service to bilateral creditors, a year-on-year increase of 35 percent, triggering a higher risk of defaults. Two thirds of the debt burden is owed to China, the world's largest sovereign creditor.

For India, the other priority is to agree on global rules for cryptocurrencies.

India's central bank governor said last year cryptocurrencies were a "huge threat" to economic and financial stability" and some officials even called for a ban.

The country is now keen on international views on it.

"Crypto assets are by definition borderless and require international collaboration to prevent regulatory arbitrage," India's Ministry of Finance told parliament this week.

"Therefore, any legislation for regulation or for banning can be effective only with significant international collaboration on evaluation of the risks and benefits and evolution of common taxonomy and standards."

The meeting comes amid attempts to ensure that sanctions on Russia do not deprive nations like Sri Lanka, Zambia and Pakistan, whose economies are still struggling to recover from the pandemic, access to vital oil and fertilizer supplies.

After a video call between Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva last week, New Delhi said it had asked the global lender to work on policy guidance to ensure energy and food security.

"Food shortages and higher food and fertilizer prices triggered by the war are exacerbating global food insecurity, which disproportionately affects the most vulnerable," the EU paper said, urging the G20 to step up efforts to address the problem.

Neither the Russian finance minister nor the central bank chief were expected to attend the meeting.

Separately, the IMF's strategy director said on Tuesday that the goal of a new sovereign debt panel of creditors and borrowers due to meet on Friday is to try to reach understandings on common standards, principles and definitions for how to restructure distressed country debts.

Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, director of the IMF's Strategy, Policy and Review Department, told reporters that the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable did not intend to discuss country-specific debt restructuring issues but to address some of the broader impediments that have been delaying such relief.

The panel, organized by the IMF, the World Bank and India, is due to hold its first virtual meeting on Friday.

This will be followed by an in-person meeting on Feb. 25 on the sidelines of a G20 finance leaders meeting in Bengaluru.

Participants include officials from creditor countries China, India, Saudi Arabia, the US and other wealthy Group of Seven democracies.

Pazarbasioglu said the roundtable would also include the Paris Club of official creditors, the Institute of International Finance, the International Capital Markets Association and other private sector creditors that she declined to identify.