By Prashanth Parameswaran
“One-stop shop” would better coordinate and market what the United States can offer.
The United States is mulling the development of a new facility based in Asia to coordinate and market U.S. infrastructure to the region in the face of growing competition by China and other countries, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The facility, which is still in the works, would serve as a “one-stop shop” for various U.S. actors to better coordinate and market their activities to Asian nations and other relevant regional institutions, James Carouso, Director of Maritime Southeast Asia Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told a roundtable at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The news comes in the wake of growing demand for infrastructure in Asia as well as new efforts by regional actors to fill it. According to KPMG, the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) alone will need around $60 billion per year until 2022 to fulfill their infrastructure needs. China has been keen to step in, most recently with its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (See: “The Truth About China’s Big, Bad Infrastructure Bank”). Japan has also recently unveiled its own proposal to inject $110 billion to develop high-quality Asian infrastructure (See: “Is This Japan’s New Challenge to China’s Infrastructure Bank?”).
Read the full story at The Diplomat