The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is doubling available funds under its COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility to provide USD5-10 billion due to high client demand. This follows AIIB’s announcement to make USD5 billion available to help public and private sector clients manage through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Requests for funding have substantially exceeded the USD5 billion originally allocated for emergency relief. Based on client feedback, immediate assistance is required in three key areas: (1) to help alleviate health care pressures in the form of health infrastructure and pandemic preparedness; (2) liquidity support through on-lending facilities and credit lines via financial institutions to address working capital and liquidity shortages and (3) immediate fiscal and budgetary support, in partnership with other multilateral development banks, so governments can focus on addressing the human and financial impacts of COVID-19.
“We are facing a formidable challenge, with the depth and severity of the crisis growing with each passing day,” said AIIB President and Chair of the Board Jin Liqun. “It was imperative that we respond to the urgent and extraordinary scale of demand from our members to significantly increase the scope of our response.”
AIIB is working closely with other international financial institutions to create a network of support options, especially for the most vulnerable economies. To support a rapid and flexible response to the crisis, the Bank’s Board of Directors has also approved a range of measures to make it easier for AIIB to seamlessly partner with other development banks.
“An adaptive, multilateral approach will be necessary to effectively help countries around the world successfully navigate the health and economic costs of recovery,” said President Jin.
AIIB is currently reviewing projects from several of its members, many in collaboration with other multilateral development banks. Examples include a USD500-million project in India to purchase equipment and detection capacity and strengthen its national health systems. Turkey has sub-mitted a request for a USD500-million credit line for two of its development banks to help alleviate working capital shortages and liquidity constraints as a result of the pandemic. Indonesia is requesting USD250 million to strengthen hospital readiness, enhance pandemic preparedness and strengthen testing.
A USD355-million emergency health project for China was approved by AIIB’s Board of Directors on Apr. 3, 2020.
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