Initiative provides win-win fruits for all

SHI YU/CHINA DAILY

Editor's note: The two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which concluded on Monday, has produced concrete results in the shape of a 76-item checklist, from memorandums of intent to collaborate to agreements on specific connectivity projects in the five key areas of policymaking, infrastructure, trade, finance and people-to-people connectivity. Seven experts share their views with China Daily's Wu Zheyu on the forum's achievements. Excerpts follow:

Development through investment, not aid

Margit Molnar, head of the China Desk of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

At the opening ceremony of the forum, President Xi Jinping announced that China will increase its financial support for the Belt and Road Initiative with an additional contribution of 100 billion yuan ($14.51 billion) to the Silk Road Fund. Since the Silk Road Fund is aimed more at providing equity financing for corporations, the additional financial support will enable them to borrow more funds based on their credibility.

The Belt and Road Initiative will need enormous amounts of funding, but projects under the initiative are not constrained on that front because of the financing available from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund. Projects along the Belt and Road can also turn to their respective regional multilateral or local financial institutions for financing. By the same token, the AIIB, for instance, will have many other projects that are not necessarily linked to the Belt and Road Initiative, as it is an investment bank and therefore seeks various opportunities. But, of course, given that the Belt and Road Initiative envisages infrastructure investment, which is the specialty of the AIIB, there will likely be tight collaboration between them.

The Belt and Road Initiative is not and should not be a foreign aid project; it is more about integration, coordination and harmonization in a large number of areas not limited to trade and investment but covering innovation, agriculture and the environment, just to mention a few. It is a project that goes beyond initial expectations of promoting trade and investment with neighboring and other countries. By envisaging harmonization of regulations in various areas of economic activity, enormous productivity gains can be reaped through cost savings. For instance, if innovators face the same conditions to register their innovations, they can access more markets and spread their ideas faster, thereby boosting efficiency.