Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei on Wednesday called for speeding up structural reforms to enhance the flexibility and resilience of the economy.
Speaking at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of Asian Development Bank (ADB) here, Lou said the world economy is still faced with severe challenges and countries should speed up their structural reforms to enhance the flexibility and resilience of their economies and foster sustainable growth by means of innovation.
As an important institution of multilateral development, ADB should adapt itself to changes in a proactive way and work out a more forward-looking development strategy that includes cooperation between high and middle-income countries, Lou said.
He maintained that ADS should develop innovative policies, improve the quality of its projects, improve its governance structure and raise institutional strength, comprehensively expand its partnership with existing multilateral development aid agencies and new institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS Development Bank.
He also suggested ADB strengthen its partnership with private institutions through the public-private partnerships (PPP). This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of ADB and the 30th anniversary of China's cooperation with ADB.
Lou said China will support ADB as always and deepen its all-round cooperation with ADB. Lou disclosed that China will donate 100 million U.S. dollars to the 11th replenishment of the Asian Development Fund (ADF 12) to help low-income members of ADB in reducing poverty.
ADB on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding with AIIB to strengthen cooperation for sustainable growth. According to the agreement, AIIB and ADB will strengthen cooperation, including co-financing, at the strategic and technical levels on the basis of complementarity, value added, institutional strengths and comparative advantages, and mutual benefit.
AIIB and ADB are already discussing projects for co-financing in the road and water sectors. The first of these projects is expected to be Pakistan's M4 highway project, a 64 km stretch of motorway connecting Shorkot to Khanewal in Punjab Province.
The two institutions will undertake regular high-level consultations between them and joint data collection to promote the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the COP21 climate agreement, according to a press release by AIIB.
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