Ravi K off to China to attend AIIB maiden annual meeting

Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake left for China yesterday (24) to participate in the maiden annual general meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Finance Ministers of all the countries in the Asian region will participate in this meeting to be held in Beijing, China. The meeting will be held at World Hotel in Beijing from 25 to 26June.

The AIIB was established in 2014 following a proposal made by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Sri Lanka is a founder member of the AIIB. The aim of setting up of the AIIB was to ensure regional cooperation for sustainable economic and social development in Asia as well as to strengthen regional resilience against impending finical crisis and other external shocks.

The first multilateral consultation meeting was held on 24January2014 in Beijing in China. So far, five multilateral consultation meetings have been held on the establishment of AIIB. The Sri Lankan Government has entered to an MOU with 22 countries to join the AIIB as a founding member in the month of October 2014.

The establishment of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will help mobilise much-needed additional funds from inside and outside resources of Asia. It will also remove the financing bottlenecks faced by the individual economies in Asia and complement the existing multilateral development banks to promote sustained and stable growth in Asia. 

The AIIB will invest in infrastructure sectors in developing Asian member countries. Among the sectors in which AIIB expects to invest are: power and energy, transportation and telecommunication, rural infrastructure and agriculture development, water supply and sanitation, environment protection, urban development and logistics and other productive sectors as deemed appropriate.