The ASEAN Infrastructure Fund (AIF) is set to begin its lending
operations in the second half of 2013, with a pipeline of around 1
billion USD for infrastructure projects in the next three years.
The information was released by the AIF Board of Directors at its
meeting on May 1, which took place on the sidelines of the 46th Annual
Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The AIF meeting
also discussed the progress of infrastructure projects identified for
the pipeline, the development of financial policy, risk-management
frameworks, and efforts to support public-private partnership (PPP) in
infrastructure development.
Key areas of progress include receipt
of the contributions from the shareholders and the completion of all
necessary administrative arrangements for the full operations of the
fund.
Bambang Brodjonegoro, head of the Fiscal Policy Agency
under Indonesian Ministry of Finance and also the AIF’s Co-Chair, said
that AIF had an active year and what AIF has accomplished was to lay the
groundwork for projects to come and the progress to be made in the
years ahead.
According to Arjun Goswami, Director of the Regional
Cooperation and Operations Division of the ADB’s Southeast Asia
Department, the projects have been carefully selected to reflect the
AIF’s priorities and the ADB’s emphasis on poverty reduction, inclusive
growth, environmental sustainability, and regional integration.
Set up in Malaysia in April 2012, the AIF initially planned to
provide annual loans of 300 million USD. Its shareholders include
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and ADB.
According to
AIF, Southeast Asian countries have enjoyed decades of strong growth,
but even with recent economic gains, its infrastructure stands behind
the Asian average and is much weaker than that of advanced economies. It
is estimated that ASEAN needs 60 billion USD a year from 2010-2020 to
develop its infrastructure.-VNA