By John Nwokocha,
with Agency Report
Rising from the 2014 IMF/World Bank annual meeting held in Washington DC, USA, the World Bank has launched a Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) which aims at financing multi billions of dollars infrastructures in the developing world.
In view of this development the World Bank will work in partnership with a whole ecosystem of asset management and private equity firms, commercial banks, pension and insurance funds, and multilateral development institutions. Some of these partners include the Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Investment Bank (EIB), the government of Japan and Singapore, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) which manages the Sovereign Wealth Fund and 23 others.
Mr Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President, disclosed that the participation of the numerous institutional investors was an indication that it was a breath of fresh air for developing nations who had seen investment in their infrastructure drop from $186 billion to $150 billion from 2012-2013.
“We have several trillions of dollars in assets represented today looking for long-term, sustainable and stable investments. In leveraging those resources, our partnership offers great promise for tackling the massive infrastructure deficit in developing economies and emerging markets, which is one of the fundamental bottlenecks to reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity,” he said.
Yong Kim, nevertheless, emphasized the need for commercially viable and bankable projects saying; “The real challenge is not a matter of money but a lack of bankable projects – a sufficient supply of commercially viable and sustainable infrastructure investments.”
A group of other stakeholders and partners expressed their optimism at the wealth of opportunities that can be made available to the developing world via the new facility. Speaking on behalf of them, Joe Hockey, Australian Treasurer and Chair of the G20 Finance Track said; “We all recognize that investment in emerging markets and developing economies will expand access to basic services and raise living standards. It also helps to underpin economic growth. The G20 looks forward to working closely with the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks on such vital innovations.”
According to the World Bank Group’s CFO, Bertrand Bader, the GIF would start a pilot phase later this year aimed at delivering complex public-private infrastructure in low and middle income countries.
