China-led bank’s founders meet to finalise rules

Officials of India and 56 other founding members of China-floated $50 billion Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have met here to finalise the rules of the bank whose operation was expected to begin later this year.

The overall format of AIIB is to be finalised in three meetings, first of which was held recently. Chinese officials stated that the Bank will draw best practices from the IMF, World Bank and ADB but will avoid domination of few countries setting rules for the international financial system. As a new multilateral institution focusing exclusively on infrastructure development, vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao said the AIIB will be dominated by developing countries, and their requests and demands need to be respected. 

While China has already been designated as President of the bank, India could get the Vice President post under the formula based on 50 per cent Gross Domestic Product, and 50 per cent Purchasing Power Parity, with primacy to be given to the Asian countries for share holders. The UK, Australia, France and Germany have also joined the bank while US and Japan stayed away.