JAKARTA, January 19, 2022
- As part of the G20 Presidency, Indonesia represented by Bank Indonesia and the Finance Ministry held the G20 Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) virtual seminar today with the topic of "Scaling up sustainable infrastructure investment by leveraging private sector participation". IWG is a G20 working team that is focused to discuss efforts to encourage strong and sustainable infrastructure development.
The meeting was opened by Wempi Saputra, the Assistant Minister for Macro Economy and International Finance in the Ministry of Finance of Indonesia, which discussed the Presidency's priorities and remind the audience on the results of the Deputies meeting [1] in December. In his opening remarks, Wempi said that investment in infrastructure has many important roles. "Infrastructure investment can play a key role, not only the economic recovery but also to support a transition to move to a more environmentally friendly development. Long-term economic growth will be supported by transforming infrastructure development to be more sustainable and resilient to a shock that may occur," he said. The session continued with a presentation by the secretariat of the Sustainable Finance Working Group (SFWG).
In the second session, the Global Infrastructure Hub presented the status of sustainable infrastructure investment and private sector participation which discussed investment trends and the issues related to the participation of the private sector in sustainable infrastructure investment.
"Unlocking sustainable infrastructure investment through ESG standards" is the topic for the third session which was presented by EDHEC, GRESB, FAST-Infra, Coalition for Climate Resilient Infrastructure, and ICP.
Session four touched base on the topic of the private investor perspectives on the gap in scaling up sustainable infrastructure investing presented by Meridiam, I-Squared, SMBC, China-Africa Development Fund. This session asked what the governments can do to leverage appetite for ESG investing and what impact can be created at the G20 level.
The last session of today’s seminar discussed countries' perspectives on sustainable infrastructure investment and private sector participation and concluded with a Q&A session among IWG members. Ending the seminar, the Co-Chairs of IWG provided the closing remarks and summary of the seminar.
The seminar is aimed to gather insights from G20 member countries and international organizations related to the G20’s infrastructure agenda and deliverables that can be produced for the year to come which will be proposed to be discussed in the Deputy Forum and The Ministry of Finance forum with the Central Bank Governor next month.***
