 Rwy'n fawr, gweithio, gyda'r gyfnod, i'm i gyd yn ddod i gyd yn ysgrifennu. Yn ystod, rwy'n credu i'r gweithio ar y ddau 3 o ffórthagol yn y Llyfrgell. Yn y ddweud fawr, gael ar gyfer y gweithio ar www.weforum.org. Mae'r ddweud yn gweithio ar y gweithio ar y gweithio ar y cerdd. Rwy'n gweithio ar y gwair i'r gerdd, ac yn y gweithio ar yr oedd ymateb ac yn y sgwmpwch. Fy enw i'w clywbeth yn ffutur, mae yw ystod benio'r 10 ynglynigur global ynglynig chi'n ei ffordd I Acronomig yma ar 2015. i'r llwyso i'r gyffredinogi o'i colleg sy'n dod Starshipol yn enedlaeth yn oed yn meddwl i'r ffwrdd i'r gafn ac efo digwydd unrhyw i'r llywodol. I helpu chweithio'r gelig o'r un o'r $1 trillion ynídol yn ddigonol y mfost cham Ditwch, oherwydd cyfarwydd. Yn hyn o'r eich cwestiynau o'r byw hwn yn y syniadol y mae ydych chi'n gallu ddod diogels yn digwydd. I'm very glad to be able to say that my two colonies have just come from an infrastructure investors summit to actually have some update on the events that unfolded during that session. So I'm going to invite them to make a couple of brief remarks on the issue of investor infrastructure financing and also what has been achieved so far today and then we'll move into Q&A. To my immediate right here, I'm very honoured to be joined by Gordon Brown, he's the chair of the World Economic Forum Global Strategic Infrastructure Initiative. He's also a member of Parliament and was Prime Minister in the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010 and he sits on the Global Agenda Council on Infrastructure. Next we have Thomas Meyer, the managing director of foreign infrastructure at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London and again a member of our Global Agenda Council Network on Infrastructure. Gordon perhaps you could start. I think infrastructure has moved right to the centre of the economic agenda, indeed the economic and social agenda of the world. First because only with investment in infrastructure can we get people water, get people electricity, get people hospitals and schools, it's a real moral endeavour. And secondly because it is vital to the economic growth we want to see and in a decade when we're now talking about secular stagnation, the limits of quantitative easing, lower interest rates which make possible, greater investment of course because it's cheaper to do, then infrastructure is absolutely crucial to the recovery of the world economy but also to the provision of services that will make industry go better. And what we found this morning is that the public-private partnership, the partnership between international agencies and governments, it was attended by for example President Zuma of South Africa, the head of the International Finance Corporation and investors and it was brought together at this we had all the major investors in infrastructure. There's a general agreement that there are problems that have got to be solved, if they can be solved we could bridge that gap and we had a number of positive initiatives. One put forward by Thomas Meyer who'll explain it himself today but others put forward by people who've got an interest in seeing infrastructure investment expand. We need to do more about project preparation because it's a costly element where there are no returns and the public sector needs to play its part. There are probably 100 project preparation facilities around the world but we need to make them work better and more effectively so we can get projects from the initial feasibility to the construction start. And we also need to provide enhancement for credit and facilities for credit so that we can get these big projects underway. If you think of the Trojan gap, it's a thousand projects roughly with costing a billion dollars and if we can find the credit and the equity to finance these projects then we can start working on them very quickly. So a new credit facility, a new credit enhancement facility, lots of discussion about how people will take equity and infrastructure in the future and of course the World Economic Forum playing its unique role as a stakeholder organisation, not only bringing people together but offering that a new knowledge hub set up by the Australians, we will add from the World Economic Forum an annual or regular report on benchmarking which countries are doing well, which sectors are doing well, what the problems are, other regulatory blockages, how they can be solved and really we're adding to what is a bank of knowledge that can transform the prospects for building. Not just in America and Europe because there are huge infrastructure needs there but also in all of the emerging markets including some of the poorest countries in the world who need infrastructure most. Gordon, thank you. Thomas, and your role in the summit and perhaps also the role that the EBID is playing in helping address this yawning gap. Thank you. I think actually I wanted to touch upon project preparation a little bit because Gordon is quite correct in saying that this is the key issue that we are facing at the moment because we have a supply side issue in that there are too few investable infrastructure projects currently coming to the market. We want to change that and this is why over the last year in the context of the World Economic Forum and in the context of much stronger MDP co-operation we have been working and structuring quite a number of project preparation facilities both by the World Bank under the GIF but also the regional MDPs themselves. And the idea here is to increase the supply of investable infrastructure projects over the next 12 to 24 months significantly so that investors, banks, institutional investors can come in. The role of the Agenda Council for Infrastructure in this context is very important because we have all the MDPs in that council but importantly we also have the public sector and key private sector stakeholders. Thank you. Thomas, you mentioned there are too few investable infrastructure projects. Gordon, you mentioned there are the trillion dollars gap that we talk about probably consists of a thousand billion dollar projects. There's a big gap in the middle there. What's wrong? Why are these projects so badly need to be taken forward? Why are they not getting taken forward? Why do we need more infrastructure? Gordon said quite rightly we need this for growth, jobs, diversification, global competitiveness. In this interconnected world industry needs infrastructure to deliver goods, consumers and producers need to be connected and this is why it is so crucial to have modern ports, container facilities, supply chains that work efficiently and effectively and may I say energy efficiently. There is a gap but let us remain positive as well because we are talking about a gap but we also need to talk about the fact that in many countries in many emerging markets this gap is starting to be closed and there are many positive examples. The role for example the world economic forum can play here is to bring those countries together that have where it has worked with those where we still face significant challenges. Now the proposals that we discussed this morning were quite interesting insofar as currently you see a situation where those emerging market infrastructure projects that are investable are usually funded by banks but we have real difficulties bringing institutional investors into the game and the idea that we have developed in the context of the world economic forum and amongst the MDPs is to create a first loss vehicle that would be funded by the regional MDPs and the World Bank which would then provide a certain first loss cover that could be extended to institutional investors and probably would bring institutional investors into emerging markets that are already investment-grade rated have a good regulatory framework but where that rating upgrade is not yet achievable without MDP support. We think that with a vehicle of around about half a billion US dollars and additional regional MDP support for these projects we could perhaps raise funding in the market in the region of about three billion US dollars. Of course all this is an initial idea developed in the context of the world economic forum but we now have a blueprint and I think we have the green light by the investor community to start working on this. I think the important thing that people look at and say look there is all this savings around the world there is capital waiting to be encouraged to invest and there is all these great needs around the world that are unmet. What can you do about it and the key to this is that we need bankable projects, we need investable projects, we need projects that are not so risky and are not so difficult to get underway that don't have huge bureaucratic or regulatory delay. There are ways that they can actually deliver for the people of the individual country which needs whether it's the water or the power or the electricity or the roads or the rail. So what we need to do to make these projects investable, to make them attractive to the investors who might want to come into them is see what we can do to deal with some of the risk. And Thomas Meyer has put forward a very innovative proposal that if the first risk on credit is taken by the multilateral and the regional development banks in certain emerging markets then we can make the projects more attractive to investors for the future. And then today Raj Shah who is the head of USAID also announced that he had come together with the banks in a number of different countries and he was offering the potential for a credit facility of around $10 billion. So two big announcements today but it just emphasises that we've got to get the public and private sector working better together so that we can meet this unmet need by using if you like the unused savings of the world. Indeed in it it sounds like on the supply side the steps have been taken to free up that money to make it more attractive to different investment, investor classes. But Gordon you also talked about project preparation it sounds like on the demand side there's still a lot of work to be done in getting projects to the stage where they are as you say attractive and less risky. The most expensive cost that is an outlay before you've even got any returns is the design and the preparation of a road construction project or a railway or a power station. And sometimes these project preparation costs are in the order of 10% and you're getting no return while you're putting out hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases millions and tens of millions of dollars. And so we need to find a way where these projects are of public benefit to defray the initial cost and that is a public private facility. Now some people want the public sector to do it in its entirety but that's not going to be possible given the scale of the projects that we're talking about. So we need to find a way of bringing the private investors into the project preparation side as well. We think there are about 100 project preparation facilities now being created because there is a momentum to do things. Some are very small, some need coordinated properly and Thomas and the European Regional Development Bank and all the regional development banks who have their own project preparation facilities now, they're taking steps to bring these together so that we can actually maximise the benefit we can get from public sector and private sector investment. So vital to the ability to do a project, not the most lucrative for an investor because there's no returns yet, but without that you cannot have the project at all. If I may add, it's very important that we see project preparation not only in the context of preparing the individual project. What we need to do as MDBs and as other stakeholders is to increase the institutional capacity in emerging markets to do more projects in a standardised, investable way. And this is why our initiative certainly will not only focus on preparing physically individual projects to a bankable level, but to have policy dialogue, fix certain legal and regulatory issues and also facilitate capacity building. And we have seen this already in some emerging markets that this capacity is being built up and when it is being built up, the pipeline of projects dramatically increases. An example is Turkey where we now have a very credible pipeline of projects to be delivered based on an already interesting portfolio of PPP projects that benefit from a predictable and stable legal and regulatory environment. And that touches upon the comment you made earlier, I believe, Thomas, from the summit you just come from, some best practices are starting to emerge. You're seeing parts of the emerging world where successfully the gap is being closed. Can you share some best practices on how we can see, how we can take forward the better preparation in different countries? Yes, you know, one of the very successful players in the world market in terms of institutional finance for infrastructure is of course Canada. Canada can show us how it could work elsewhere if the government and the private sector and local governments take the right steps forward. And about a year ago we organised a seminar in London where we brought the Canadian pension funds, governments and players together with the Turkish government and construction companies and players. And as a concrete result of that event, for example, the first international and domestic bond issues for infrastructure projects have happened. Mersin Port was a very attractive, a very interesting case where a joint venture between the Singaporean PSA and the local sponsor attracted institutional investor money from Asia and from the US for modernisation of a port. And last year we started to actually attract domestic lira bond funding for quite a number of infrastructure players in Turkey. So what I like to say here is that we have examples of successful mature markets, Canada, Australia and the UK, where the knowledge and the standards that have been applied there can be replicated elsewhere. And the fascinating thing is this is now a global market. I mean 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, these were domestic issues and most governments had to deal with domestic finance, domestic players who were investors. And now people see this as a global issue. You have global investors, you have global infrastructure initiatives, you have obviously a global interest in projects in the emerging markets in particular. India, a huge amount of infrastructure investment needed. For example, they need to build a thousand universities they're committed to in the next few years. Africa, of course, big projects like Inga, the hydroelectricity project that could power 40% of Africa, but also roads, a new interest in railways there as well. Latin America, a country that is expanding, of course, and big infrastructure projects, road, rail, power around the world, a desire to get more energy efficient power stations and therefore renewable energy as a source of new investment. So there is a huge global interest and where you have an expert in one continent, their expertise can be applied to every continent. A question we received over social media now, and unsurprisingly bearing in mind this is an economic forum and economics has been the heart of the news agenda this week with the news from Europe and also the Chinese Premier talking earlier on this week, which is, to what extent is the economic climate going to affect the appetite and the ability to fund infrastructure projects? I'm thinking the end of the commodity super cycle. Is that going to dampen appetite for building infrastructure in emerging markets such as Africa? Europe growth is anemic. Are government balance sheets going to continue to pose a problem even though the private sector is prepared to play a part in funding the similar projects? We live in a very uncertain world and clearly there are significant challenges ahead everywhere. I would say though that in the infrastructure space we have such a backlog of investments that are required that many of these investments will make sense in any economic climate. I give you an example. In many ports in Eastern Europe the level of modernisation is not yet sufficient to allow full containerisation. So these investments will happen because there is an intrinsic return on investment and they benefit an economy whether it's growing fast or not so fast. I would also say that infrastructure space is a space which has much longer timelines and many of these projects will take a few years to be built. So there is an underlying supply of projects if they are investable that will be done. I would also like to say that there are some positive examples that are currently seen very clearly. For example, the Indonesian government has taken the oil price decline over the last few months as an opportunity to cut subsidies from the public budgets to energy users and is now redirecting those funds to health education and construction of infrastructure. So I think there are not only threats that are coming from the current end of the cycle but also opportunities. At its most basic of course as Thomas has hinted, I mean low interest rates are an opportunity. If you can build infrastructure in a more cost effective way using a long period of low interest rates then this is probably the best time to invest in infrastructure. And when we look at the theories about what's been going wrong with the world economy like secular stagnation, the idea that we can't reach full employment other than through credit booms, then one of the solutions to this problem is actually investment in infrastructure. And Larry Summers who formulated the theory of secular stagnation for this era at least, he's argued that infrastructure is a necessary element of securing long term sustainable growth because it doesn't only employ people and get the economy moving faster forward. Of course it is also investment that is beneficial to future productivity that can be gained as a result of making the right and cost effective investments in the future. So I would say that there is an issue about public debt obviously and therefore the public sector is not in a position to invest in the way that it did in the past. But that makes sense of private public cooperation because the savings are at a very high level. There's a glut of savings around the world. If we can have investable projects, bankable projects, sustainable projects that deal with the mitigation of risk, then savings that are available can be unlocked. So there's no shortage of capital. There's low interest rates. There is a desire to solve the growth problem by investment through infrastructure and that makes it all the more important that we have the good projects coming forward as quickly as possible. Gentleman, you've both come from what sounds like a successful meeting here this morning. How are you going to take that meeting forward and the results and achieve further outcomes in 2015? What are your priorities? Well the World Economic Forum has been given a mandate this morning by people who are there from the political leaders to the business leaders and the international institutional leaders to take this forward. Practical proposals, action-oriented, not a talking shop to come forward with more highly developed proposals over the next few months to test them out with people in the different communities over the next few months. There will be a major get-together at the World Bank and IMF meetings in April. I know the EBRD. Thomas is probably too modest to say it himself. I've convened a public-private partnership conference in June. We've got the World Economic Forum meeting in Africa in June and that will have a huge part of its agenda, looking at the infrastructure issues in Africa from the Inga project for hydroelectricity to roads and to railways and to other forms of power station. And then we are mandated to come back next year with more specific proposals and really it's the interaction between the public sector internationally and at a national level and the private investor community but also the construction, the engineering, the development community, so to speak, the developer community. It's this interaction that's bringing the best results. So I see the next few years has been a huge progress in bringing the public and private sector together, big increase in infrastructure investment if we can use this period of low interest rates to build upon. And the World Economic Forum is a partnership body with its stakeholders right at the centre of this and it's also going to be important in dealing with poverty around the world because the provision of water, electricity, the provision of hospitals and schools, the provision obviously of roads and railways allowing people to travel, these are essential elements in mitigating and reducing poverty in the poorest countries of the world. Thank you very much. Fascinating discussion. I'd like to thank you gentlemen for taking time out of your busy schedules. I'd like to thank our audience for joining us here today and our audience for also watching this online. This issue briefing is now closed. I look forward to welcoming you back later on today. Thank you very much.