AIB will Fill Africa’s Investment Needs

(PANA)--The head of division of economic policies and research at the African Union (AU) Commission, Dr. Abdallah Msa has said the creation of the African Investment Bank (AIB) will be used to fill the real needs of funding in Africa evaluated between $54 to $100 billion for the next seven years.

The AIB should ensure priority investments on the continent, of which only ten per cent could have been mobilised, Msa said on Friday. The AU Commission official also indicated that in view of the food crisis which destroyed Africa, the energy crisis and the current global economic recession, it was urgent to make every effort to set up this institution that is one of the favoured and priority tools to enable the continent move forward and speed up the integration process and sustainable development.

In an interview with PANA as part of the workshop of experts, lawyers, financiers and African economists on the review of the draft status of the African Investment Bank, which was held from 11 to 13 May in Tripoli, Msa said it was a big African ambition to have big integrating projects able to support the development, finance priority investments, economic diversification and structural infrastructure that have been neglected for a long time and which did not have any creditors at investments level.

He declared that existing funding sources on the international market are not available for Africans to ensure investments, adding that there would be no competition with the African Development Bank (AfDB), given that the institution supports the project creation of AIB. Msa noted that the investment bank was the first institution to set up its structures, pointing that ‘one year after the signing of agreements in 2007, we are embarking on the finalisation phase of the statutory framework.’

He praised Libya, which will host the headquarters of the institution and its leader, Muammar Kadhafi for his support for the integrating project and his will for accelerating the integration process by bringing both the financial relief and the political and organisational support for the establishment of the pan-African institution which, he said, ‘if everything goes well, could be created in one y ear’s time’.

The AU Commission official also indicated that the protocol would be submitted for ratification by member states as from June and that the drafts on the status would be submitted at the next AU summit which will decide on the statutory framework. He described it as a matter of emergency that was deemed priority by the AU Commission and Kadhafi, the AU President. ‘We will be meeting in two weeks in Egypt for the African Ministers of Economy and Finance meeting to give a decision on the status that we developed’.

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