AIIB pledges critical infrastructure investments across Asia amid global turbulence

The Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) aims to marshal resources from governments, private parties and peer institutions to build critical infrastructure across Asia despite geopolitical headwinds, its new president said on Monday.Zou Jiayi, who took the baton of the multilateral development bank in mid-January from inaugural president Jin Liqun, called for investments to augment country-specific tax revenues and promote industrial development, putting economies on a stronger footing as importers and exporters.“We are experiencing a difficult time [and] we see there are a lot of challenges here,” she told a session of the annual Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong.Low-interest, development-focused lenders such as the AIIB face “geopolitical tensions”, a “fragmentation of global value chains” and “declining concessional resources” for projects, the 62-year-old president warned in her first public speech overseas since assuming the role.“Markets are very hesitant during the turbulent global environment, but people do need investment, they do need resilient infrastructure,” she added.“It is a duty of development banks to invest and support industrialisation so they can also provide goods and services to the global market.”Public resources “alone will not be sufficient,” added Zou, who is also the chairwoman of the 111-member bank’s board. Private capital would be crucial, along with support from other development banks, she said.