Indonesia prefers the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank over more established multilateral institutions to help fund construction of the south-east Asian country’s proposed $31bn new capital city.
The AIIB could offer more flexible options for financing, such as funding public-private partnerships, compared with multilateral lenders including the Washington-headquartered World Bank or the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, said Kennedy Simanjuntak, Indonesia’s deputy minister for infrastructure affairs.
“If I need it, I will go first to the AIIB,” Mr Simanjuntak told the Financial Times. “If we utilise old-style multilaterals, we cannot achieve our target” of starting relocation to the new capital by 2024.