Insight
Building a better APAC
PAUL RICHARDS, GLOBAL HEAD OF STRUCTURED EXPORT FINANCE, ANZ | AUG 2019
The three-country initiative aimed at driving infrastructure development in the Asia-Pacific region by Australia, Japan and the US’s will help grow their influence in the region - and there is political desire across the triumvirate do so.
In November, the three countries announced an agreement around their “shared dedication to addressing the infrastructure needs of the region”.
The announcements were a step-change in government policy regarding regional infrastructure development but the challenge will be to identify projects and bring them to market.
The initiative is very much into project identification mode right now, in terms of where they will deploy or would like to deploy new funding. But what I think you won’t see if a pure focus on big projects.
I think smaller projects will be just as interesting to the initiative, including in the Pacific, which is very much a focus. The transactions are likely to be smaller than any operations in Asia but politically just as appealing I believe.
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“There is political desire between Australia, Japan and the US to be more actively supporting infrastructure around the region.”
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Push away
The global export finance and insurance market is working on a broader sustainable development framework as part of a global push away from investments in fossil-dependent industries.
The governments and the community are demanding companies respond to the growing risk of climate change.
Certainly the export finance community is one key stakeholder in this ongoing move to a low carbon economy.
Paul Richards is Global Head of Structured Export Finance at ANZ
This article is based on comments made to TXF on the sidelines of TXF 2019 in Berlin in June.
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