Introduction

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has created a COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility (CRF) to support AIIB’s Members and clients in alleviating and mitigating economic, financial and public health pressures arising from COVID-19.

Availability

The CRF had an initial duration of eighteen months and a size of USD5 billion. Due to high client demand, the CRF was subsequently expanded and extended to USD13 billion until April 2022. After the full amount of USD13 billion under the CRF was committed, approved or programmed, the CRF was further expanded to a total CRF financing of USD20 billion with its duration extended until end-2023.

The CRF is available to both public and private sector entities in any AIIB Member facing (or at risk of facing) serious adverse impacts as a result of COVID-19.

Facility Usage

As of February 2022, 46 CRF projects have been approved totaling USD11.6 billion across 25 Members including: USD3.4 billion (29 percent) for the public health sector, of which USD1.7 are vaccine financings; USD2.3 billion (20 percent) for finance and liquidity; USD5.9 billion (51 percent) for economic resilience and Policy-Based Financings (PBFs).

Types of Financing that can be considered under the extended CRF

The CRF is designed to be flexible and adaptive to the diverse emergency health care and economic needs of AIIB Members.

For projects that have entered the CRF Pipeline prior to February 24, 2022, AIIB will consider financing immediate health sector needs (incl. vaccines), economic resilience and liquidity constraints.

For CRF projects that will enter into the CRF pipeline after February 24, 2022, AIIB will consider a narrower scope of eligible pandemic-related responses for financing as follows:

  1. cofinancing the procurement, distribution and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics;
  2. cofinancing Policy-Based Financing for enhanced pandemic response, preparedness, and recovery; and
  3. financing essential COVID-19 emergency health care or urgent expenditure needs.
Types of Financing that can be deployed under the extended CRF

Financings under the CRF will apply AIIB’s regular financing terms and risk criteria.

The CRF can use any existing AIIB instruments but may consider others as deemed appropriate, including:

  1. Sovereign-backed financing for vaccines
    This can be in the form of AIIB cofinancing of Investment Project Finance with the World Bank (WB) or Asian Development Bank (ADB) or in the form of AIIB cofinancing of WB’s Program-for-Results (PforR) and ADB’s Results-based lending (RBL). The WB’s PforR and ADB’s RBL instruments are particularly suitable for financing government programs with disbursement of financing linked to verifiable program results and against eligible program expenditures. consisting of a large number of smaller expenditures.
  2. Sovereign-backed financing for Policy Based Financing (PBF)
    The Bank shall provide Policy Based Financings (PBFs) only in the form of AIIB cofinancing with the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank, where the Bank shall apply the World Bank’s Policy on Development Policy Financing or the Asian Development Bank’s Policy on Policy-based Lending, as appropriate, in lieu of the Bank’s operational policies (including the Bank’s Operational Policy on Financing, the Environmental and Social Policy and Procurement Policies).
  3. Sovereign-backed or nonsovereign-backed financing for emergency healthcare or urgent expenditure needs, which AIIB could finance either as standalone or join co-financing led by peer MDBs
Approval Process

Approvals will be based on AIIB’s current procedures.