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The ASEAN Infrastructure Fund, the largest pooling of financialresources among Southeast Asia s 10-member bloc, held its firstboard meeting in Manila last week, but the extent to which Cambodiawill borrow from the non-concessional fund has yet to bedetermined, experts said. ASEAN countries and the Asian Development Bank have providedinitial equity of US$485 million for the AIF that will financeregional road, power and water projects, according to a statementfrom the ADB. Infrastructure in the region needed an estimated $60 billion ayear, the statement said. But the fund will lend at rates higher than the concessional loansCambodian law allows the country to take. For ASEAN s less-developed countries such as Cambodia, Laos andMyanmar, scrutiny must be used when drawing financing from the AIF,ADB country head Peter Brimble said yesterday. I think for [less developed countries] to borrow great sums ofmoney at less concessional rates, they would need to look verycarefully at that, Brimble said. At the moment, the terms are going to be higher than whatCambodia usually borrows from ADB on concessional loans, he said. So there are questions about whether Cambodia will immediatelywant to borrow. Cambodia s Budget Law allows the Kingdom to borrow only atconcessional rates, Chea Kimsong, an economist at the NGO Forumfor Cambodia, said yesterday. Although concessional rates in 2011 ranged between 0.01 per cent onsome loans from Japan to 2 per cent on some Chinese loans, CheaKimsong said he was unaware of commercial borrowing done byCambodia. ADB rates for Cambodia averaged 1.32 per cent and its lendingaccounted for 42 per cent of loans taken by the country as ofOctober 2011, according to data compiled by the NGO Forum. ADB lends about $150 million to Cambodia annually, Brimble said. A concessional window, however, could open for less developedcountries looking for cheaper infrastructure funding. There have been talks of lower-rate AIF financing, Brimble said,but he was unaware of the progress of those talks. There was also a possibility of AFI lending to private projects, headded. AIF lending was anticipated to be $4 billion through 2020, and withADB co-financing could be as much as $13 billion, according to theADB statement. The fund would finance six projects a year, with a spending cap of$75 million per project. ASEAN countries hold more than $700 billion in reserves, which theADB statement said could be recycled into the region s growinginfrastructure needed through the new infrastructure fund. I am an expert from roll-formingmachinery.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Box Beam Welding Manufacturer , Welding Rotators Manufacturer, H Beam Welding,and more.
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