MCDF Shares Cross-Border Infrastructure Partnership Lessons at Infra4Dev Conference

A team from the Multilateral Cooperation for Development Finance (MCDF) shared cross-border infrastructure partnership lessons during a pair of panels and held bilateral meetings with partners to discuss collaboration opportunities while attending the World Bank’s Infrastructure for Development (Infra4Dev) Conference on 15-17 May in Guangzhou.

Mr. Ayumi Konishi, Senior Advisor to the MCDF CEO, participated in the panel on cross-border infrastructure. He was joined by the World Bank’s Ms. Aisha Williams, Global Director of Infrastructure Finance, Mr. Franz Drees-Gross, Infrastructure Regional Director for West and Central Africa, and Mr. Nicolas Peltier-Thiberge, Global Director of Transport and the panel moderator, as well as Dr. Murtaza Syed, Ecosystem Head at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Mr. Konishi described how regional cooperation initiatives in Central and West Asia, and Southeast Asia, have helped to overcome coordination challenges in cross-border infrastructure projects by enabling multiple layers of communication between countries, at technical, provincial, and national levels. He also noted the vital role International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have played in supporting these projects, as detailed in the forthcoming two debut volumes of the MCDF Connectivity Infrastructure Report Series.

“A pragmatic and step-by-step approach that nurtures local, provincial and central government coordination is an important key to realizing sustainable, high-quality connectivity infrastructure,” said Mr. Konishi. “Proceeding with project arrangements among countries that can agree is a proven way to avoid delays that may occur when other countries have not yet confirmed their official commitments.”

Other panelists emphasized the need to attract more private investment in cross-border projects which are now mainly financed by the public sector. They cited the Monsoon Wind Power Project exporting wind power from Lao PDR to Viet Nam and the East African Submarine System of fiber optic cables connecting the region’s countries with the rest of the world as examples of how IFIs and partners can support this through risk mitigation instruments such as partial risk guarantees and first loss tranches.

Mr. Ede Ijjasz, Senior Adviser to the MCDF CEO and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, joined a separate panel on advances in risk assessment for resilient infrastructure and the implications for finance, institutions, and the governance of infrastructure agencies.

The MCDF team held bilateral meetings with representatives from a range of IFIs, international organizations, and research institutions on the margins of the Infra4Dev Conference. Among them included meetings with the World Bank’s regional and sectoral infrastructure directors to explore opportunities to collaborate with MCDF on information sharing, capacity building, and project preparation activities aimed at promoting high-quality connectivity infrastructure.