AIIB demonstrates China's bid for infrastructure investment

BRISBANE - Institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) display China's efforts to boost global infrastructure investment, an expert said Sunday.

The AIIB is an opportunity to show to the world that "China has done a great deal of putting real hard money on the table," Bessma Momani, senior fellow of the Center for International Governance Innovation in Canada, told a press conference on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.

Bessma said that the 20-member grouping should concentrate on increasing competition, combating tax avoidance, boosting trade and spurring employment to achieve the goal of lifting G20's collective GDP by 2 percent by 2018.

Among these measures, "one of the things that is most durable and easiest to implement is infrastructure investment," she said, adding that given the current global political landscape, "the challenge is to figure out who is going to take on this big infrastructure spending."

Bessma said she remained pessimistic that these bilateral separate banks would be warmly greeted by many of the Western countries thinking of the Asian Monetary Fund and more recently the BRICS Development Bank.

"All these tend to be resisted by many countries in the West."

Last month, a total of 21 Asian countries inked a memorandum of understanding on the establishment of the AIIB with an expected initial subscribed capital of $50 billion.

With Beijing as its headquarters, the AIIB will be an inter-governmental regional development institution in Asia.

The creation of the AIIB has been hailed by many countries in terms of intermediating finance since many Asia-Pacific economies encounter difficulties in getting financial support for infrastructure projects.

Members named for Asia infrastructure bank	Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will guide capital