The Fiji TimesUnanswered questions – Aussie infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific

September noticed the discharge of an unbiased assessment of Australia’s $4 billion ($F5.9b) regional improvement financing initiative – the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP).

Since its inception in 2019, the AIFFP has introduced 13 initiatives and dedicated simply greater than $A1 billion ($F1.49b) in financing – 80 per cent as loans and 20 per cent as grants.

The overwhelming majority of AIFFP’s funds – $A868 million ($F1,297m) – has gone to move sector initiatives, with the rest going to initiatives targeted on vitality, communications and flood alleviation. An unbiased assessment of the ability was overdue.

Whereas features of the AIFFP’s financing and operations had been touched on in different evaluations, there had not been a radical analysis of the ability as an entire – regardless of its grant allocation and lending headroom receiving substantial will increase since its institution.

The 2-year ‘system-wide assessment’ of the AIFFP, undertaken by consulting agency Alinea Worldwide, had numerous good issues to say.

It discovered that the AIFFP workplace is working effectively and successfully, has high-quality employees who’ve developed robust relationships with Pacific companions, and highquality environmental and social safeguards techniques.

AIFFP additionally obtained a gold star for getting cash out the door, with the assessment discovering it was the second largest infrastructure financier within the Pacific in 2021.

However, as Jubilee Australia Analysis Centre’s new report Aiding the Pacific? Investigating the initiatives of the AIFFP finds, some basic questions stay.

Is the AIFFP the precise automobile for offering improvement help to the Pacific? Will it assist convey broad-based social improvement, and handle local weather change adaptation within the area?

Or will it exacerbate the useful resource curse, or be used as a political instrument to counter Chinese language affect within the Pacific?

Let’s flip to the final query first. Are AIFFP initiatives primarily motivated by geostrategic issues? A few of the AIFFP’s mission choices appear to be responding to China.

AIFFP has funded two undersea cable initiatives (connecting to Palau and Timor-Leste), with a 3rd within the works in East Micronesia, and it’s clear that Australia shouldn’t be eager to have its undersea cables community compromised through potential Huawei involvement in Pacific nodes.

There are different, much less apparent, indicators of geostrategic focus – such because the $A621.4 million ($F928.6m) Papua New Guinea (PNG) ports improve program, which was introduced following Chinese language curiosity in ports in PNG and Solomon Islands.

Ought to this matter? In any case, using help as a geopolitical instrument is as outdated as worldwide help itself.

However provided that these initiatives draw on scarce ODA (official improvement help) financing for his or her grant elements, initiatives that primarily handle geostrategic moderately than improvement considerations are drawing funds away from poverty alleviation and local weather adaptation initiatives at a time when these are sorely wanted.

Because of this, Jubilee Australia recommends AIFFP financing needs to be further to the help price range. One other key query – and one which was not requested within the latest systemwide assessment – is whether or not a combined mortgage and grant program just like the AIFFP is appropriate in a area already going through important debt challenges.

The AIFFP has put insurance policies in place to restrict the chance of loans contributing to debt misery, corresponding to designating seven nations within the Pacific as solely eligible for grants.

Nevertheless, the ability has additionally dedicated $A656.6 million ($F981.0m) in mortgage financing to PNG alone – a rustic at the moment rated by the IMF as at excessive threat of debt misery.

With greater than $2 billion (F$2.9b) in loans nonetheless to be dedicated, and a small pool of nations within the area eligible to obtain loans, the AIFFP might want to discover extra loan-worthy initiatives – almost definitely in PNG and Fiji, the area’s two largest economies.

Added to that is the truth that AIFFP’s rates of interest are much less concessional than different lenders such because the Asian Growth Financial institution – a priority highlighted within the systemwide assessment.

AIFFP combines its loans with grants to make a concessional bundle, however rising rates of interest may make its loans extra pricey. Loans will not be at all times a nasty factor, and might help nations finance important public infrastructure and companies.

However reimbursement of exterior debt may constrain social spending – in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, 64 decrease earnings nations spent extra on debt repayments than on healthcare.

Each Fiji and PNG are anticipated to see a discount in authorities spending over the interval 2019-25.

The stress to repay loans in overseas foreign money may drive nations in the direction of export-oriented extractive industries – corresponding to mining, logging and palm oil – that always don’t ship broad-based financial prosperity or poverty alleviation.

That is additionally a direct threat for some AIFFP initiatives – for instance, one of many ports to be upgraded underneath the PNG Ports Growth Mission is at the moment used for exports of unsustainably logged rainforest timber.

Lastly, can the AIFFP ship on the Pacific area’s local weather adaptation wants? The area has an pressing unmet want for financing for local weather adaptation: the IMF has estimated the area wants adaptation financing of near $US1 billion ($F2.1b) per yr.

AIFFP has already dedicated to 3 renewable vitality initiatives, in PNG, Palau and Solomon Islands, and has not too long ago introduced a Pacific Local weather Infrastructure Financing Partnership.

Nevertheless, solely $A5 million ($F7.4m) to date has gone to local weather adaptation – for a flood alleviation mission in Fiji – and it’s questionable whether or not the AIFFP’s deal with bankable, giant infrastructure loans will enable it to assist the sorts of local-level adaptation infrastructure that the area wants.

The Pacific Islands Discussion board has arrange its personal fund, the Pacific Resilience Facility, to fulfill that want for small-scale adaptation initiatives, and is in search of contributions to that fund.

In a constrained price range setting, will Australia’s choice to ship local weather finance by way of the AIFFP depart sufficient help cash to assist the sorts of native adaptation that Pacific nations have requested for?

With these questions left unanswered by the latest assessment, there stays a necessity for a radical investigation of the AIFFP’s influence on improvement, poverty alleviation and local weather adaptation within the Pacific.

Resolving these points is crucial to justify any future funding injection into the ability.

• LUKE FLETCHER is the chief director of the Jubilee Australia Analysis Centre, and a visiting fellow on the College of New South Wales Faculty of Social Sciences. The views expressed by the creator will not be essentially shared by this newspaper.