BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Monday marks the seventh anniversary of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development bank with a mission to enhance social and economic progress in Asia.
Seven years on, the Beijing-headquartered development institution has grown from 57 founding members to 106 approved members.
In the latest move, the AIIB board of governors has approved Mauritania's application, raising the bank's approved membership to 106. Mauritania is now the AIIB's 55th member outside the Asia region, 21 of which are from Africa. To date, AIIB has approved eight projects in Africa amounting to 1.58 billion U.S. dollars.
Its approved members now cover 81 percent of the world's population and 65 percent of the global GDP. The bank has become the world's second-largest international multilateral development institution, with only the World Bank boasting more members.
It has developed a portfolio of 202 projects in 33 countries with a total value of 38.8 billion U.S. dollars, in sectors such as energy, transportation, water, communications, education and public health.
Besides support for the infrastructure of its members, the AIIB has been boosting green development and innovation in financing tools.
In 2022, the AIIB's climate financing accounted for 55 percent of its total approved financing.
In June 2022, the AIIB issued 1.5 billion yuan (223.55 million U.S. dollars) of panda bonds on China's interbank bond market. They are the first sustainable-development bonds to have been issued by an international institution in China.
In March 2022, the AIIB announced that it had approved an extension of the COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility (CRF) until end-2023 to continue supporting the bank's members in overcoming their most pressing pandemic and recovery challenges. The extension comes with an increase in the CRF's financing volume, raising the AIIB's total CRF financing from 13 billion U.S. dollars to 20 billion U.S. dollars.
The CRF was launched in April 2020 as part of the coordinated international response to counter the COVID-19 crisis. Prior to the extension, the duration of the CRF was set until April 2022.
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