Russia to play weighty part in Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank - Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW, April 2. /TASS/. Russia expects the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to promote Eurasian integration, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday. "On March 30, Russia officially accepted China’s proposal to join AIIB as a founding country and regional participant," he said. "The Chinese partners’ initiative aims to help Asian countries to meet their growing demand for the financing of transport, energy and telecommunications projects." The diplomat said that "Russia as a country within the bank’s target operations region intends to play a weighty part in investment decision making, as well as attract the bank’s assets for the improvement of infrastructure of Siberia and the Far East of Russia." "We expect this bank to become an efficient tool for the strengthening of transcontinental interrelatedness and promote the development of Eurasian integration and its connection with other regional integration projects," Lukashevich said. More than 50 Asian and European states have joined the project implementation. According to China’s Sina news previous report, China has already received applications to join the AIIB from most Group of Twenty (G20) member states, as well as the world’s 20 largest economies, including Germany, France, Britain, Brazil, Italy, Russia, India, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland. According to the Chinese foreign ministry, 47 applications have been received to join Beijing’s rival to the Asian Development Bank and other US-led financial institutions. Some 30 applications have already been approved. The ministry said that by Sunday (March 29), 42 countries -- including Denmark and Australia -- had filed applications to join the AIIB. The AIIB will be formally established by the end of this year and some likely members are already expressing high hopes for the regional bank, according to Sina report. A number of American allies, including Germany, France, the UK and Italy, have already announced plans to begin putting money toward the AIIB. But the United States has not decided to join as Washington worries that the AIIB fund would weaken the status of such global financial institutions as the World Bank and the IMF. "It is good to have new applicators for the AIIB. I heard that the finance minister is about to make a China tour. I hope the AIIB will be on his agenda," former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez said. Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on March 28 that Russia also intended to participate in the AIIB establishment. Finland and Egypt have been among the last countries that expressed their intention to participate in the establishment of this new international financial institution. Japan so far does not intend to join the bank, however, does not exclude such a possibility in the future, Finance Minister Taro Aso said at a news conference in Tokyo. According to him, the loans transparency is the main criterion for the final decision. The idea of ​​creating ABII belongs to China, the first memorandum on this project was signed in Beijing in October last year. The financial institution’s authorised capital will amount to $100 billion, the initial share capital - $50 billion. The headquarters of the bank, which is to be fully established by the end of 2015, will be located in Beijing. Read more