ASEAN Infrastructure Centre of Excellence

This initiative seeks to increase trade and private investment in the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in order to create more jobs and reduce poverty. The initiative supports greater regional connectivity including physical connectivity through infrastructure development and institutional connectivity through effective institutions mechanisms and processes. The project aims to support public-private partnership projects to finance Southeast Asia's pressing infrastructure needs. As national economies become more interconnected regional cooperation and integration help to accelerate economic growth reduce poverty and economic disparity raise productivity and employment and strengthen institutions. The ASEAN Infrastructure Centre of Excellence aims to provide expert support and technical assistance to help member countries identify and prepare viable bankable and high impact regional public-private partnership projects to develop infrastructure. Based in Singapore and co-financed by the Asian Development Bank and Singapore the Centre of Excellence complements and supports the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund established in 2011 to finance the infrastructure needed to achieve regional economic integration by 2015. The Centre of Excellence complements the Infrastructure Fund by providing the technical expertise needed to properly design and structure public-private partnership projects that can then be financed by the Fund and be marketed for private sector investment. Both the public-private partnership models established and the capacity building provided to ASEAN member states by the Centre of Excellence seek to catalyze and attract long-term and sustainable private investment in the region's infrastructure sector.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: (i) improved Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) infrastructure/physical connectivity and investment climate for infrastructure development; and (ii) increased effectiveness of the ASEAN member countries in developing and tendering bankable and high-impact gender-sensitive and environmentally sustainable regional infrastructure public private partnerships.