What is the responsibility of member countries?
First of all, I want to take issue with you when you say I pick the rosy pictures. I never pick the rosy pictures, I always pick the realistic pictures.... Certainly my picture involves lots of aspirations on what we aim to achieve. This is not my aspiration; it is the aspiration of the people of all these countries. So let's be realistic.
We cannot achieve all these objectives over a really short period of time, but I think we should always aim at all these grand programs, which would benefit all of the people of all the member countries. New members or existing members certainly will place high expectations on this bank.
They certainly try, at least for many developing countries, to get as many resources as possible from this bank. They would like to have as many projects as possible. But we cannot, I think, meet all of their expectations. We must achieve counterbalance and regional balance. Sometimes we have to decline ... because we believe some other projects are more important from the regional perspective. ... Probably, the response from other institutions would be the same. If your project does not measure up to their high standard for environmental protection they cannot do it.
What is the budget of AIIB?
I enjoyed living in the Philippines for a good five years when I served as vice-president of the Asian Development Bank. That platform gave me a lot of opportunities to communicate with people in member countries and also helped me learn more about your great country. The Philippines is a founding member, and we certainly will look forward to new opportunity to develop a strong relationship with your country.
We are early in the stages and it's not responsible for me to give you some definite figure of how much we can lend a year, but maybe I can offer you some examples. ADB has a capital base of $160 billion. Roughly, there is $16 billion for lending out in a year. The World Bank has $257 billion; their lending program is probably $25-$26 billion a year. So that kind of reference probably would help you to more or less arrive at a rough idea.
We depend on the experience of the IMF, World Bank and ADB if we want to learn more about the macroeconomic situation of the country. We don't have to duplicate the research in these areas. Instead, we can focus our resources on research in some other areas, such as renewable energy. But we don't have to duplicate the efforts of other institutions.
You see, it is truly important for us to keep in mind any country would have a need, a special, particular need. Just quote Jane Austen. If I remember correctly, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." And this wife is a matter of preference.
