Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) President Jin Likun on Tuesday said that India must strike a balance between physical infrastructure and social infrastructure such as health services.
Emphasizing that the country is facing a “great need” to strengthen its healthcare infrastructure, the AIIB President said that the multilateral lender will make India socially as well as climate-resilient in the coming years. The infrastructure will finance both.
The AIIB will align its actions with the goals of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change by July 2023, and expects to finance infrastructure projects to mitigate and adapt to climate change worth $50 billion by 2030, Mr. Jin further said in a press conference. at the meeting of the Board of Governors.
‘complementary effort’
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her intervention, emphasized the importance of multilateral banks in complementing the efforts of countries to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and the impending climate crisis.
“He highlighted certain expectations from the Bank, including the need to explore investment opportunities in asset creation and development in the areas of social infrastructure; To further accelerate private sector capital mobilization for inclusive and green growth; and to set up a Resident Board and Regional Offices to ensure accountability, transparency and quality of operations and investments,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
Mr Jin said India needed to develop modern infrastructure and, when the bank examined the proposals, worked with the government to ensure that infrastructure projects that could tackle climate change were prioritized .
‘Making Progress’
“I can assure you that we are making very significant progress in this regard. Second, we financed projects to tackle the pandemic in India and at this point in time, I can see that the projects we financed are are already working. I am very happy to see that the Indian government is quickly battling the pandemic,” said the AIIB president.
“What we’re looking forward to is when we can quickly go back to normal infrastructure investment actions … which can also help health care systems and social infrastructure.”
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