Newsman: President Biden has announced a $600 billion global infrastructure program to counter China at the G7 summit on Sunday. He said the U.S. will mobilize $200 billion dollars of investment in global infrastructure projects in the next five years, as part of an effort by the world’s leading democratic economies to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The overall investment, including G7 partners and private capital, aims to hit $600 billion over the next five years.
“This isn’t aid or charity,” Biden said, flanked by other G7 leaders on the sidelines of the summit in Germany. “It’s an investment that will deliver returns for everyone, including the American people and the people of all our nations.”
“We collectively have dozens of projects already underway around the globe,” Biden said, arguing that this effort will prove democracies can deliver, and with fewer strings attached than Chinese-funded infrastructure. “It’s a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future. And let communities around the world see themselves, see for themselves the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies.”
The announcement is an official launch and a rebranding of what had been rolled out last year at the G7 in the UK as “Build Back Better World,” a play on Biden’s domestic proposal that would have reshaped the U.S. economy but foundered in Congress. The effort is now called the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, or PGII.
The idea is to combine government funding with private capital from pension funds, private equity funds and insurance funds, among others.
The G7 initiative is funding projects in four major categories: clean energy, health systems, gender equality and information and communications technology.
Investments include the following:
$2 billion for a solar project in Angola, including solar mini-grids, home power kits and solar to power telecommunications
$600 million for a U.S. company to build a submarine telecommunications cable that will connect Singapore to France through Egypt and the Horn of Africa, delivering high speed internet
Up to $50 million from the U.S. to the World Bank’s Childcare Incentive Fund, which is also getting support from Canada, Australia and numerous foundations
$3.3 million in technical assistance from the U.S. to the Institut Pasteur de Dakar for development of an industrial-scale, multi-vaccine manufacturing facility in Senegal that could produce COVID-19 vaccines and others, in partnership with other G7 nations and the EU
