The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will possibly offer 1 billion US dollars in the next five years to facilitate various projects under the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperative framework, an ADB official said in Kunming on Saturday.

"We will provide a lot of funding over the next five years (to GMS projects) and we expect that the sum will be something like 1 billion US dollars," Rajat M. Nag, director general of the bank's Mekong department, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

The ADB officer, who is in charge of the GMS Economic Cooperation Program that involves the six nations sharing the Lancang-Mekong River, namely Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, said that the program consists of a lot of projects and each of them is now in great need of funding.

Since the cooperative mechanism was initiated by the ADB in 1992, more than 100 joint projects have been launched in the fields of traffic, energy, telecommunications, environment, human resources development, investment and trade, tourism and agriculture, involving a total investment of 3.5 billion US dollars. The ADB alone has provided loans worth 1.18 billion US dollars and an additional technical assistance worth 140 million US dollars.

As the main sponsor of the program, the bank will continue to mobilize financing assistance worldwide, both from official and private resources, to maintain the momentum of project development, Nag said.

But the ADB funds and official input from the member countries are not enough to meet the capital requirement, he pointed out, adding that "the private sector will become a major resource of funding."

Investment from the private sector will reach at least 15 billion US dollars in the next five years in infrastructure construction alone, the officer estimated, adding that he is "very optimistic" about the prospects.

Nag expressed the belief that government leaders of the six GMS member nations, who will meet here next Monday and Tuesday at the second GMS summit, will provide a very important strategic leadership that will help boost investors' confidence.

Source: Xinhua