Indonesia asks China for special Belt and Road Initiative fund
- Indonesian finance minister working on loan structure and criteria
Indonesia has asked China to set up a special fund within its Belt and Road Initiative for investment in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, after offering China projects worth US$91 billion, Indonesian government officials said on Wednesday.
Indonesia has not been among the biggest beneficiaries of China’s trillion-dollar push to create a modern-day Silk Road.
Indonesia says this is because it has insisted that any loan within the initiative’s framework is done on a business-to-business basis to avoid exposing the government in case of default.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo made the request for a special fund during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sideline of the Group of 20 summit in Japan last week, Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.
Indrawati said she had been given the responsibility of coming up with the fund’s structure, including a proposal to China on the size of the fund and the criteria for loans from it.
“I am currently doing a study about its form, its mechanism, the size of it and of course the consequences of its costs,” she said.