BEIJING: China and 20 other countries moved forward on Friday towards setting up an Asian infrastructure lender seen as a counterweight to Western-backed international development banks.
The signatories put their names to a memorandum of understanding to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The institution, whose development has been driven by China, will be based in Beijing according to the official news agency Xinhua, and is expected to have initial capital of $50 billion.
It is intended to address the region's burgeoning demand for transportation, dams, ports and other facilities, officials say.
"In China we have a folk saying," Chinese President Xi Jinping told delegates after the signing ceremony. "If you would like to get rich, build roads first, and I believe that is a very vivid description of the importance of infrastructure to economic development."
China's rise to become the world's second-largest economy has been accompanied by a desire to play a greater role in international organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the ADB, which have been dominated by Europe, the United States and Japan.
But other than China, among Asia's 10 largest economies only India and Singapore signed the AIIB memorandum, with three of the top five -- Japan, South Korea and Indonesia -- notably absent.
The Japanese head of the Asian Development Bank, another regional lender, said after the signing ceremony that questions remained over the AIIB's structure and that it needed to adhere to international standards.
"It is vitally important that AIIB adopt international best practices in procurement and environmental and social safeguard standards on its projects and programmes," ADB President Takehiko Nakao said in a statement.
The Japanese government has expressed concern, while the United States is reportedly fiercely opposed to the AIIB.
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