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13 March 2018, Gateway House

Interview with Danny Alexander of AIIB

One of the priorities of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which held its third annual meeting in Mumbai earlier this week, is to mobilise more private capital for infrastructure and support sustainable projects

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This is a transcript of a video interview conducted with Danny Alexander, Vice President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), was conducted on the sidelines of the Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue on 13 March 2018 and has been edited for this format.

Aashna Agarwal (GH):  How do you assess the G20? With membership – of G20 and the AIIB – overlapping, is there any desire on the part of members to assist in the financing of its (the G20’s) agenda?

Danny Alexander (DA): Well, the G20 is a very useful body for bringing together the members of that organisation for help to look collectively into international issues, including infrastructure, and they interact very effectively with New Development Banks (NDBs), like the AIIB. So, the idea is to discuss the G20 often, to get other NDBs like us, to look at it. In that sense, it is very valuable. A priority we have in the AIIB, for example, is to mobilise more private capital for infrastructure. This is also something that’s been discussed in the G20. So in that sense, there is quite an overlap.

GH: What has been the biggest challenge for the AIIB in financing infrastructure development in the Asia-Pacific region?

DA: The big challenge is identifying projects of the right quality with the right economic benefits. We are looking for projects that are economically beneficial, that are environmentally sustainable, more socially acceptable — to meet our standards of compliance in safeguarding the  environment and the local people. We work closely with governments in the region to do so.

India, so far, is our largest borrower. We’ve had many successful projects in India — we look forward to them. We will be hosting our annual meeting here in June. It’s a great opportunity to talk to India and our other member countries about how we can deepen our engagement and go further in developing good projects in the future.

This is a transcript of a video interview conducted with Danny Alexander, Vice President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), was conducted on the sidelines of the Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue on 13 March 2018 and has been edited for this format. He was a panelist on the session ‘G20: more than a talk-shop’.

Danny Alexander, Vice President, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Shanghai, China.

Aashna Agarwal is the Content Cooridnator at Gateway House.

This interview was exclusively conducted for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

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