The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a Beijing- based multilateral development bank. India has the second-largest vote share in this Bank. They started their operations in January 2016 and have now grown to 103 approved members worldwide.
As part of the continuous effort to improve connectivity, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is focusing to provide loans worth USD 3 billion for various large infrastructure projects. This includes Delhi and Meerut Rapid Rail, Mumbai Metro Rail and Chennai Peripheral Ring Road project, over the next 12 months.
Mr. D J Pandian mentioned in an interview that India is the largest borrower, which accounts for around 25 percent of their total lending by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. On 16th July 2020, the AIIB has approved up to USD 19.6 billion for 87 projects in their 24 economies. Since its inception in 2016, it has approved loans of Rs. 4.3 billion USD across 17 projects in India. Regarding the future aspect of the financing opportunities, he added that the pipeline is very robust and there exist certain infrastructure projects at various stages of approval. The most important information shared by Mr. Pandian is that “the Projects worth USD 4.5-5 billion are there in the pipeline and we will be approving another USD 3 billion to India in a year if everything goes well”.
The major projects, that they considered for financing are the Delhi-Meerut rapid rail corridor which is around USD 500 million, Haryana Bypass Link Railway -USD 400 million, Mumbai Metro Line V -USD 350 million and Mumbai Urban Transport Project -USD 500 million. They plan to implement three projects in Maharashtra of about USD 1.2 billion. Three road projects from Tamil Nadu are at the different stages of approval including the Chennai Peripheral Ring Road project worth about USD 1.1 billion.
They have already approved two loans of USD 500 million and USD 750 million as assistance to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The loan amount of USD 500 million was sanctioned in May for building a resilient health system, that can effectively treat COVID-19 patients and to control the spread. The second loan of USD 750 million-loan was approved in the last month to help the government to strengthen its battle against the adverse impact of COVID-19 on poor and vulnerable households.
