Second Meeting of the Infrastructure Financing and Public Private Partnership Network of Asia and the Pacific

The challenges of infrastructure financing in Asia and the Pacific are complex. This is particularly true for a region covering members States with vastly different geographic and economic levels of development, including small islands developing states (SIDS), landlocked developing countries (LLDcs), and least developed countries (LDCs). In addition to the maintenance of new and existing infrastructure, such variations have implications on the need for infrastructure development to meet new demand arising from higher income, population, and urbanization.

To this end, ESCAP has taken the initiative to serve member States’ needs and successfully launched The Infrastructure Financing and PPP Network of Asia and the Pacific with support from the China Public-Private Partnerships Center (CPPPC) in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, China on 12 and 13 September 2018. The event gathered the heads of PPP units, infrastructure financing specialists and capital market experts from 23 countries in the region to enhance knowledge and capacity of PPP units on the effective use of PPP mechanisms as well as other infrastructure financing strategies to support the pursuit of sustainable infrastructure development.

Building on the positive feedback from country representatives, ESCAP is organizing the second meeting of this network with the support of the Public-Private Partnership Center of the Philippines under the Philippine National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and the CPPPC under the Ministry of Finance of China. The objective of this second meeting is to advance the dialogue from the first network meeting and further engage the recommendations of network members on the role of this network, the establishment of the web portal and project pipeline, and how it can strengthen an Asia-Pacific platform of public authorities, financiers and market stakeholders who plan and implement infrastructure financing projects.