European Development Bank Works with Asian Infrastructure Bank and China’s Belt and Road

PRESS RELEASE

European Development Bank Works with Asian Infrastructure Bank and China’s Belt and Road

Oct. 13, 2017 (EIRNS)—The president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Suma Chakrabarti, told Xinhua that the EBRD and the Belt and Road Initiative, together with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), are working together in areas along the Silk Road route. "The core values of China’s Belt and Road Initiative are shared by the EBRD," Chakrabarti said on Thursday, adding that "There is very much an overlap between what we do and the Belt and Road Initiative."

The vision for the initiative was a framework for cooperation and development across nations and continents which the EBRD supported, Chakrabarti told Xinhua. "If you look at the number of countries we work in, 37, then 32 of them are on the Belt and Road initiative," he said. "We have become really rather big in Central Asia which is the heart of the Belt and Road Initiative."

Chakrabarti said that EBRD’s investment has increased by about 75 percent annually in the past few years in Central Asia with a total of $12 billion. Cooperation between the EBRD and the AIIB is demonstrated, said Chakrabarti, as a team grouping AIIB/EBRD officials are working together in the AIIB’s headquarters in Beijing. "With AIIB we have co-financed the project in Tajikistan, the road from Dushanbe to the Uzbek border," he said. The first joint project of the two banks will form part of the east-west highway in Central Asia, which is designed to connect Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Chakrabarti said that he hoped the two institutions could further broaden their cooperation: "There are potential co-financing projects in Georgia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan—further projects that we will do together."