The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing’s answer to the World Bank, has approved one of its highest-profile international partnerships, just weeks after it was accused of being infiltrated by China’s Communist party.
The AIIB’s board last week approved a proposal to issue $1bn in credit guarantees against sovereign-backed loans made by the World Bank’s lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The partnership comes as multilateral development banks are trying to think more ambitiously about their role in mobilising finance. A G20 working group on capital adequacy last year recommended that development banks expand their use of financial innovation to provide additional lending capacity.