Infrastructure sector needs to enhance financing ability

[SINGAPORE] The infrastructure sector needs to enhance the ability of the financing ecosystem to match projects with available capital, said Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang yesterday.

This would entail "right-siting" capital and mitigating risks - both necessary even as governments work at building a pipeline of bankable projects, he said at the World Bank-Singapore Infrastructure Finance Summit.

With Asian project debt volumes now almost back to pre-crisis levels, and long-term investors such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and endowments enjoying projected asset growth of up to US$3 trillion a year by 2020, the industry's focus now was to find the best ways of harnessing institutional capital to support the region's infrastructural needs, he said.