AIIB’s Board of Directors Approves $509 M Financing for its First 4 Projects:Power, Transport and Urban Investments span South, Southeast and Central Asia

Beijing, June 24 (NsNewsWire) — The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s Board of Directors today approved its first 4 loans totaling $509 million to finance 4 projects. Three of the 4 projects are co-financing operations with multilateral development bank (MDB) partners. The approved loans are:
 a $165 million loan for a Power Distribution System Upgrade and Expansion Project in Bangladesh;
 a $216.5 million loan for a National Slum Upgrading Project in Indonesia, expected to be co-financed with the World Bank;
 a $100 million loan to finance the Shorkot-Khanewal Section of National Motorway M-4 in Pakistan, co-financed with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID); and
 a $ 27.5 million loan for the Dushanbe-Uzbekistan Border Road Improvement Project in Tajikistan, co-financed with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
AIIB’s President Jin Liqun noted, “I am delighted to announce that AIIB’s Board of Directors has today – just six months after the Bank’s inauguration — approved the first group of loans. These projects, which span the energy, urban development and transport sectors, will help to bridge the region’s critical infrastructure financing gap and strengthen regional connectivity. We are very pleased that three of these projects are joint co-financing operations with our development partners, ADB, EBRD and the World Bank. This has been an outstanding and tangible demonstration of multilateral cooperation that has expanded the pool of financing available to our joint member countries. We are working on a number of additional projects and look forward to bringing them to our Board for its approval later this year.”
The Bank’s Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, DJ Pandian, welcomed the new investments noting, “The Bank places tremendous importance on ensuring that its investments lead to positive results and measureable outcomes for its clients and will improve the lives of the millions of people in the different regions of Asia.”
The Bank, which supports infrastructure development and regional connectivity in Asia, is targeting lending of approximately $1.2 billion in 2016.