Egyptian Finance Minister Amr el-Garhy will take part Friday in the second annual meeting of the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in South Korea. The AIIB annual meeting of the board of governors will continue for two days from Friday at the International Convention Center in the country's southern resort island of Jeju. El-Garhy, who is also Egypt's governor to the AIIB and representative of the non-Asian and non-European member countries, is expected to deliver an opening speech at the annual meeting. Egyptian Deputy Finance Minister for fiscal policies Ahmed Kouchouk will also take part in the AIIB meeting, according to the Ministry of Finance's statement. The first annual meeting was held in Beijing last year. Officially opened in January in 2016, the Beijing-based AIIB is a multilateral development bank initiated by China and supported by a wide range of countries and regions, which will provide financing for infrastructure improvement in Asia. First proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping two years ago, the bank has become one of China's biggest foreign policy successes. Despite the opposition of Washington, major U.S. allies such as Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Philippines and South Korea have joined. The capital of the bank is $100 billion, equivalent to 2⁄3 of the capital of the Asian Development Bank and about half that of the World Bank. The AIIB's mandate will be to fund projects both inside and outside of Asia. About 2,000 government officials and journalists, including delegations of the AIIB members and international agency chiefs as well as financiers and businessmen will attend the meeting. The second AIIB annual meeting will be held under the theme of "Sustainable Infrastructure," seeking strategic directions of the international infrastructure bank and making major decisions on the bank's management.
