Mumbai, June 26: Moving out of Asia first time, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)'s Fourth Annual Meeting will be held in Luxembourg in July 2019, an official said here on Tuesday.
Luxembourg is a founding member of AIIB as well as a leading international financial centre and facilitator of investments between Europe and Asia, said AIIB Vice President and Corporate Secretary Danny Alexander.
"European countries have been strong supporters of the creation of the AIIB so it is particularly welcome to have this early opportunity to bring all of the Bank's members to Europe. This will be a great opportunity for public and private sector representatives from around the world to discuss on infrastructure development in Asia and beyond," he said.
Luxembourg Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna said his country was "honoured" to become the first non-regional member of AIIB to host the bank's Annual Meeting in Luxembourg City next July.
The second Asian Infrastructure Forum will be held as part of the 2019 Annual Meeting, the official said.
The first AIIB Board of Governors meeting was held in Beijing in 2016, followed by Jeju, South Korea in 2017 and the latest two-day meeting in Mumbai which concluded here on Tuesday.
Headquartered in Beijing, the AIIB is a multilateral development bank with a mission to improve social and economic outcomes in Asia and beyond.
It commenced operations in January 2016 and has now grown to 87 member from around the world, and invests in sustainable infrastructure and other productive sectors, with India ranking as its biggest borrower.
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Mangaluru: Congress leader and former minister B Ramanath Rai slammed BJP leader R Ashoka for calling AICC General Secretary KC Venugopal an agent of the party high command, and asked if the general secretary and other office-bearers in the BJP were commission agents too.
Rai, who addressed a press meet at the Congress office in the city on Friday, expressed fury over the recent comments of the BJP leader that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was presenting himself in a shameless manner in public life. Ashoka, who is also Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, had said that the Congress government had ‘broken every previous record on corruption-related controversies’.
“Ashoka has spoken with sheer ignorance and displays his lack of maturity, as he often does while facing the media. KC Venugopal has been working at organization of the party and it is unbecoming of Ashoka to criticize Venugopal as he did,” Rai told reporters.
“Being in a responsible position, how acceptable is it for Ashoka to pass disrespectful, random comments about another leader who also holds a responsible position? If KC Venugopal is indeed an agent of the party high command, what should we consider BJP leaders to be? Are they brokers?” he asked
Commenting on Ashoka’s allegations of corruption in the Congress government in Karnataka, Rai pointed out, “The KSRTC land was sold to private parties when he (Ashoka) was transport minister. We can find several such cases across the state, which need to be probed.”
The former minister, however, refused to comment on the incident that occurred at Mangaluru airport during CM Siddaramaiah’s visit to the city recently.
Former mayors Ashraf and Shashidhar Hegde, Congress activists Vishwas Kumar Das, Subhodaya Alva, Shabeer, Baby Kundar, Padmanabha, Nazeer Bajal and Prem were present.
