China-backed AIIB offers vaccine loans to help partners tackle Covid-19 as it expects pandemic to linger

With the Covid-19 pandemic unlikely to end soon, the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) said it will continue to provide vaccine financing to partner countries to improve their health care systems and fight the pandemic.

While the AIIB is supposed to focus on helping less developed countries to develop their infrastructure projects, the bank has taken a flexible approach to address emergencies arising from the Covid-19, which has haunted the world for two years, bank president Jin Liqun said on Monday.

“Covid-19 is an intractable viral disease; it’s unlikely to be wiped out in the foreseeable future,” Jin said in a video speech at the 15th Asian Financial Forum (AFF) in Hong Kong, adding that mutations and variants will continue to cause disruptions to normal life and economic activity for some time.

“When the pandemic situation stabilises, the bank will go back to its normal financing for infrastructure development,” he said.

The AIIB, which began operations in 2016 and has 103 members worldwide, has long been viewed as China’s answer to the Western-dominated global financial system. It is seen as a potential rival to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank as well as a way to promote the Belt and Road Initiative.

Due to Omicron, the AFF cancelled physical meetings and moved all panel discussions online. Since the coronavirus variant emerged in November, cases across the world have galloped, leading to record daily infections in several countries, including the US, UK and Australia.