Infrastructure Asia (InfraAsia) held its third Asia Infrastructure Forum (AIF) on Aug 2 and 3, with its focus on “scaling up sustainable infrastructure” to drive recovery for the region after the economic and social impacts of the past two years.

AIF guest of honour Indranee Rajah, minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and second minister for finance and national development, says that to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), public and private investments must flow into developing sustainable infrastructure “at scale”. Some US$2 trillion ($2.76 trillion) will be required to build sustainable infrastructure in Asean, she adds.

Rajah unveiled the InfraAsia Project Portal that will “improve the visibility” of the region’s infrastructure project pipeline, raising regional counterparts’ awareness of technological and financial solutions from over 600 of Infrastructure Asia’s Singapore and Singapore-based partners, while serving as a virtual marketplace to “connect like-minded partners” to develop these infrastructure projects.

InfraAsia, an initiative by Enterprise Singapore and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has seven key markets made up of Asean members Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as Bangladesh and India in the subcontinent. Its current focus sectors are energy, social infrastructure, transport, urban solutions and water and sanitation.

Executive director of InfraAsia Lavan Thiru says that regional projects worth some $4 billion from countries including Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are already listed on the portal. The projects are in water, waste management, logistics and energy.

Infrastructure Asia has inked memorandum of understandings (MOUs) with Japan, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia in the past year to “catalyse more sustainable infrastructure opportunities” as Asia looks towards infrastructure as a key economic growth driver, says Thiru.

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He notes that although investment in renewable energy projects “soared to new heights” in 2021, there is still much to be done. “Energy transition and decarbonisation do not happen overnight — investments need to be made, projects need to be structured, sustainable infrastructure needs to be designed and built. In other words, we have lots to do and to do so quickly,” he says.

He explains that this year’s AIF theme focuses on bringing together collaborators from both the public and private sectors to accelerate the region’s sustainability efforts, with an important part of InfraAsia’s job being to foster a “common level of understanding of public-private partnerships” among regional government officials.

On Aug 3, Rajah discussed the recent signing of a new MOU between the Singapore government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to strengthen its collaboration within infrastructure financing and innovation, as well as to address “new priorities” in areas including liveable cities and fintech.

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The new 2022 Singapore-ADB MOU, which replaces the 2012 MOU between the ADB and Singapore, will see the multilateral development bank working closely with Singapore agencies such as InfraAsia to build a strong ecosystem and mobilise private sector support for infrastructure projects to address the region’s needs.

The Leader of the House in the Singapore parliament also announced a renewed cooperation agreement between the ADB and InfraAsia to establish a series of “Innovative Finance Clinics” to encourage governments to utilise innovative approaches and build in sustainability considerations in developing their infrastructure programmes.

“InfraAsia is also partnering with regional government entities to build a pipeline of bankable projects to attract private investors,” says Rajah, adding that InfraAsia will support its regional partners and will work with ecosystem players in Singapore to provide project structuring advice, facilitate market sounding sessions from regional governments, as well as build capacity through the sharing of knowledge and best practices.

An MOU between InfraAsia and Invest India was also signed at the AIF to formalise the regional collaboration between the two agencies.

Singapore seeks private investment 'at scale' to meet regional infrastructure needs

Singapore seeks private investment 'at scale' to meet regional infrastructure needs

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