基础设施举措是IMF会议上罕见的亮点

With growth slowing in much of the world and policymakers and analysts worried about everything from potential monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve to geopolitical risks in the Middle East and Ukraine, the idea of a low-cost stimulus to economies sounds almost too good to be true.

然而，基础设施投资的支持者相信，他们正是有这样一种灵丹妙药。上周五，一批公共部门机构和机构投资者与世界银行（worldbank）共同启动了全球基础设施基金（Global Infrastructure Facility），该基金旨在简亚博赞助欧冠化公路、电力、水利和其他项目的规划流程，并利用数十亿美元的额外资金来建设这些项目。第二天，由发达国家和发展中国家组成的20国集团（G20）财长宣布建立一个全球基础设施倡议，旨在通过分享大型项目的信息和专业知识，促进各国政府之间的合作。

Given the low interest rates prevailing today and the high potential return on infrastructure, investing in the sector amounts to the proverbial free lunch, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summerswrote in an op-ed piecein theFinancial Times. Amid the gloomy atmosphere prevailing in Washington at the annual meetings of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the GIF was one of the few bright spots.

奥巴马总统说：“经济增长是我们消除贫困的最有力工具，然而，如果没有基础设施——电力、水和道路——增长将永远不会起飞。”金勇（Jim Yong Kim）said at a signing ceremony at the World Bank’s headquarters.

Sub-Saharan Africa generates only as much electric power as Spain, and Nigeria, the continent’s most-populous country with nearly 180 million people, generates less power than the city-state of Singapore, with 5.5 million people. The Bank estimates that sub-Saharan Africa needs $100 billion a year in infrastructure investment; for all developing countries, the need climbs to a cool $1 trillion. The Bank ramped up its infrastructure spending to $24 billion in the financial year ended June 30, but Kim concedes that’s just a drop in the bucket.

The GIF joins multilateral agencies like the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank with private-sector players such as investment giantBlackRock, reinsurer Swiss Re, DSB Bank of Singapore and HSBC Holdings.

Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other long-term investors have been turning their attention to the infrastructure opportunity in recent years, but so far talk has been more notable than action. The World Bank estimates that the world’s insurers and pension funds have invested only about 1 percent of their roughly $80 trillion in assets in infrastructure. Private investment in infrastructure in emerging markets actually dropped to $150 billion last year from $186 billion in 2012.

“We believe in infrastructure as an asset class,” says Guido Fürer, chief investment officer at Swiss Re. “It’s a perfect match for an institutional investor with long-term liabilities.” But a lack of “bankable projects” limits the ability of institutions like Swiss Re to increase its exposure to the sector, he adds. “It’s almost impossible to allocate a significant amount of money to infrastructure with the appropriate risk-return characteristics.”

The GIF aims to address that problem by identifying priority projects, streamlining planning procedures, strengthening regulatory and legal certainty for investors and standardizing financial instruments. World Bank officials hope to have at least one pilot project ready to launch by the end of this year. Piyush Gupta, chief executive of DBS, said his bank’s project finance team was working to identify potential projects that could benefit from the GIF.

The scope for improvement is significant. V. Shankar, chief executive officer for Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Americas at Standard Chartered Bank, said he met recently with Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Ali Babacan, who noted that every time the government goes to build a bridge, it starts from scratch by issuing a new request for proposal to contractors. Standardized planning, bidding and financing procedures could facilitate the flow of funds into the sector, Shankar said.

“Is this going to be a silver bullet? No,” said the banker. But he added, “Infrastructure is going to be a driver of economic growth, particularly in emerging markets.”