The Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is planning to tap capital markets again later in the year following this week's bond debut, the lender's Chief Financial Office Thierry de Longuemar said on Thursday. The AIIB priced its first bond on Thursday - a dollar-denominated 2.5 billion five-year issue which attracted orders of over $4.4 billion.
"We will certainly come back - we will receive in a few months about $20 billion in capital," de Longuemar told Reuters. "We need to leverage this." The AIIB has 97 members and was launched in January 2016 to help meet Asia's infrastructure needs.
Since starting its operations, it has financed some $8 billion in projects, mostly in Asia but also in countries such as Egypt. One or more issues could be launched in the remainder of the year, while the AIIB would aim to sell several billion dollars of bonds in the next few years in various maturities to build a yield curve, he said. While the US dollar would remain the dominant currency, a foray into domestic currency bond issuance was not far away.