 So, welcome. Thank you very much for coming to this press conference on the Sustainable Development Investment Partnership. The Sustainable Development Investment Partnership is a multi-stakeholder collaborative platform that was announced at the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa back in 2015 to provide a practical platform for institutions and for capital providers to action the funding gap related to the Sustainable Development Goals. Since the announcement a little less than two years ago, Sustainable Development Investment Partnership now represents 35 member institutions from across the world, including governments, development finance institutions, multilateral development banks, commercial banks, and pension funds. Development finance is a critical element of what SDIP is trying to promote. This is the strategic use of public and philanthropic funds to help catalyze private capital in emerging and frontier markets, which is particularly important in light of the recent Asian Development Bank report that found that in developing Asia and the Pacific region alone, $1.7 trillion a year will be required for infrastructure to maintain current growth rates and to ensure that the investments are made for mitigation and adaptation for climate change. I have a distinguished panel here today that's going to be discussing a few important developments about SDIP, particularly here in the ASEAN region. We have the, His Excellency, Mr. Vongseh Vichsot, who is vice chairman of the Supreme National Economic Council and Secretary of State of the Ministry of Economy and Finance here in the Kingdom of Cambodia. We have to his left Mr. Carby Leggett, who is head of public sector and development organizations for Asia at Standard Chartered Bank, and Mr. Donald P. Kanak, who is chairman of East Spring Investments. So with that, I'd like to open up with His Excellency to give us some brief remarks about Cambodia's involvement in the Sustainable Development Investment Partnership. Thank you, Philip. Let me start by stressing our pleasure to be here in this press conference on the establishment of the SDIP, I would call it in short, to save time, ASEAN Hub. I would like to confirm that Cambodia has become, is proud to be the first member from ASEAN to join this initiative following the signing of an agreement at the World Economic Forum in January 2017 in Davos, Switzerland. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome and celebrate the establishment of the SDIP, ASEAN Hub, which has 35 participating members from governments, financial and development institutions across the world, and Cambodia highly values and recognized the SDIP as an innovation platform for mobilizing, and that work of the past investment resource managed by the World Economic Forum and OECD, with the objective of reducing the shortage of financing and building up countries' capacity for realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals through coordination between public and private sectors as to remove trade barriers and alleviate investment risk, aiming to accelerate and mobilize bright investment and resources to sustainably develop infrastructure in developed countries, including our country. I hope the SDIP's ASEAN Infrastructure Hub will receive strong support from other countries in the region, especially ASEAN member, and be joined by them to strengthen and expand our deep cooperation within the region. Again, I would like to welcome, highly praise and thank for your presence in this World Connect Forum on ASEAN. I would like to announce the operation of the SDIP, ASEAN hub from this moment on, and Cambodia will host the first event of SDIP later this year. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Lea, can I pass to the floor over to you? Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much. And first of all, let me thank the Kingdom of Cambodia for hosting a fantastic event this week and the World Economic Forum as well. It's a pleasure to be here. Standard chartered bank places an enormous amount of importance on this initiative. It's been our honor and pleasure to be a founding member of the SDIP and a member of the steering committee, and it's with great pleasure that we've seen the membership grow from 20 participants in 2015 until 35 today. I think that fact alone signals the importance of this initiative. At Standard Chartered, we see this SDIP as an action-oriented platform that will allow us to see and consider critical infrastructure projects and review for financing, projects that in many other cases may have been deemed by the market to be unbankable. Blended finance is the cutting edge of financing Asia's critical infrastructure needs, and we believe that it will have a fundamental impact in terms of unlocking the required financing. We are honored to be part of this initiative and look forward to putting our balance sheet and our technical expertise to work in support of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Phillip. Thank you, Your Excellency and Carby for encouraging remarks. Let me first introduce eSpring Investments. Established in 1994, eSpring Investments is the Asian asset management business of Prudential PLC, an international financial services company. Our unique Asian insights, international reach, and proven investment excellence make us a trusted asset manager for a growing list of institutional and retail clients in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We provide investment solutions across a range of asset classes including equities, fixed income, multi-asset, infrastructure, and alternatives. Our infrastructure team has extensive buy side and sell side experience. It helps our clients to realize significant opportunities for infrastructure projects in emerging markets driven by economic and population growth, urbanization, and progressive regulatory frameworks. There's a big funding need in all emerging Asian markets for more local currency and offshore financing of infrastructure projects. And infrastructure is critical to ASEAN's continuing growth and competitiveness. We believe that as a long-term investor, the insurance industry can be a provider of capital to sustainable infrastructure projects. Our focus is on finding infrastructure projects that meet our investment objectives of stability, strong economics, and that pass legal, social, and environmental due diligence. E-Spring views SDIP as an effective platform to bring the private and public sectors together and encourage the market opportunities for the private sector in emerging and frontier markets, including through blended finance. I'm pleased to formally announce that E-Spring investments will be joining SDIP as the 35th member institution and that E-Spring looks forward to being actively involved in the activities of SDIP, the ASEAN hub, to scale the flow of sustainable infrastructure projects across the region. Thank you. Thank you very much and we welcome E-Spring with open arms. We look forward to having you bring your experience and expertise in the region to bear as we expand here in ASEAN. Perhaps I can just ask you a few questions. Your Excellency, if I could direct the first question to you. What exactly is the biggest challenge you face here in the Kingdom of Cambodia in terms of getting your projects to bankability and where do you see the Sustainable Development Investment Partnership helping you to move that process forward? I think first of all, number one is that we don't have our own financial resources sufficiently to finance our need in infrastructures. And number two is about our sufficient capacity and expertise to mobilize, to work on the framework of platforms so that we can attract sufficient capital to meet the need in financing infrastructures. Capacity in terms of putting everything in the right framework in terms of policy in terms of especially in the capacity side, project identification, project formulation and project implementation and project management. So there's a long way to go but by having this facility I think it will bring us expertise know-how and a kind of living field but I would like to address the importance of private commercial perspective. It's about efficiency, about innovation that we would like to see. In this country, but on the other hand I think capacity is still the main issue that we have to tackle. So this area but by having this mechanism platform I think by joining it I think it will have addressed those issues especially issue of viability, sustainability and issue of so fair share of risk and benefit of the investment and the bi-minister and the country as a system. Mr. Lager, if I could pose a similar question to you. Standard Charter has a long-standing tradition and operation here across the ASEAN region. I believe you've been in Cambodia alone for over 100 years if I'm not mistaken. Where does SCIP come in with regards to your regional strategy in terms of how you are able to engage and build your business across Asia? Sure. Thank you for the question. Standard Charter is highly committed to the ASEAN market. We are operating in all of the countries. Here we have a deep commitment to banking these markets and banking them in a way that drives sustainable development. Infrastructure as we all have heard over the past couple of days here at the World Economic Forum is fundamental to unlocking the full potential of the ASEAN countries and the deficit is significant. There's no single solution to plugging that deficit. The required investment is not something that government balance sheets alone can provide for. It's not something that commercial banking balance sheets alone can provide for or multilateral development banks for that matter. The only solution is to bring all three of these together and bring the power of each of these parts to bear on the totality of the infrastructure requirement. We believe that pooling multilateral development capital together with commercial banking capital together, government resources allows to risk manage the projects more effectively. It allows for lending tenors to be extended and it allows for greater risk management of issues like currency risk or other related political risks. We broadly see blended finance as something that crowds in additional liquidity and is very complementary across these three components I mentioned. We have at Standard Chartered a very robust infrastructure business that we have actually actively engaged in for many years. We have a team of experts both on the advisory side as well as the project export finance side that gets engaged in this business and we are looking forward to working together with the ASEAN hub to bring this expertise to bear to contribute to unlocking ASEAN's potential. Thank you. I know that this spring has been very involved with a number of different initiatives across the ASEAN region. I'm wondering how do you see SDIP as being different from some of those other initiatives that you're currently involved in? SDIP is global and regional so it offers opportunities for sharing not just within this region but from other regions to this region. That's one way. Secondly I'd say that as it's set up SDIP is focusing on what I would call the practical and actionable side of this work. By sharing projects that are priority projects of governments with institutional investors in allowing a situation to occur that can help those projects become improved and investable, this should unlock a lot more potential for financing and so I think that focus on being very practical and actionable and sharing information and having that dialogue and having being action oriented makes SDIP unique. You were excellent sir so you nodding there. Do you share a similar views on the unique aspect of SDIP in the region? I would not say it's unique but I would say a kind of additional tools which will have complement to the existing framework that exists within the region but I agree with you that it's bringing also a global perspective and commercial and institutional perspective to the financing infrastructure and distribution which is very critical to this country. We are so used to the government financing to the multilateral bank or financial institution financing. I think on the one hand you need a different perspective also so that you can see the disadvantages of those and you can look for a kind of very I think fit solution to your country or to the region in terms of that financing or whatever in terms of risk mitigation in terms of making the project more investable or bankable whatever. That's some kind of diversity but in the way that it would lead to a kind of leaving a good project, good impact for the country and for the region. That's my point here. I don't see it as a kind of unique it is a kind of innovation innovative way of financing and there are a lot of understanding studies such as given the needs in financing infrastructure, the government itself and the existing financial student cannot cope with the needs so we need us to bring private capital in and on the other side there are a lot of funds available in the market liquidity so why don't you use some of that and then this can also allow government to save money that they also find difficult to collect also in terms of taxation whatever to save for other priorities like health education where you cannot attract so much private sectors. That's a point it's about sustainable in financing not just about infrastructure but in terms of fiscal sustainability for the country as a whole. Before that blended finance is a critical piece of what you're doing are there specific projects that you can give some examples of where blended finance has really helped to mobilize those projects forward and can be used as a case study for us to look at as we push forward here in the ASEAN region? We've had standard charters has executed a number of transactions that have involved multilateral development banks. We have active discussions with the World Bank around their guarantee programs. We've also been actively engaged with the Chinese development entities in terms of credit enhancing or risk participating in our transactions and the landscape of transactions that can be utilized in this manner are very broad from roads, bridges power facilities even schools and hospitals in some cases. So I think the concept of blended finance is one that is very broad and that's exactly what why it's such a powerful concept can be employed across a number of different industries and utilize to risk manage all aspects of the transaction. Now to get a little more technical, Mr. Keneck, you've been involved with a number of the discussions around the SDIP ASEAN hub and what's planned for this year. Can you perhaps talk a little bit about what the SDIP ASEAN hub will look to do over the next year or so as it builds out its activities? Well Phillip, as far as I'm aware the strategy is still evolving but based on the discussions the last couple of days here my sense is there was a coalescing around two priorities for this year. One of them was the first one being to map the universe in the region of project preparation facilities and other support facilities that are available to help projects move along. There was a bit of question around was that there was awareness among the community investment community or other communities of all these PPFs and so mapping those and helping to share information about those and understand if there are any gaps is one priority. One and then priority two would be country level work starting with the Kingdom of Cambodia and then building on the work that's already been happening with the business working group in Indonesia taking country level focus and trying to share project information and again this issue of helping to exchange the points of view and to try to make projects be more financeable. So I realize we're running close to short of time I don't know if there's any questions from the floor or perhaps we can open it up. Can you just introduce your name and organization? My name is Abby and I was just wondering if you could give us an update on projects and progress since the launch and specifically how they've aided this. So is there another question? Hi, I'm Jessica from EcoBusiness in Singapore. I'm just wondering how does the SDIPC it's role in the context of the AIIB which has very similar objectives and also what are some of the priority areas for the ASI and HAB? Are there specific projects that you've already used up? Thank you. I'll just address the first question with regards to the SDIP. So to date the SDIP has built a pipeline of 65 projects of a total value of $40 billion exceeding $40 billion. These are large scale infrastructure projects in many cases as you know they do tend to take a little bit of time to get to financial close. However the feedback we have had from projects is that the SDIP process has been quite effective in helping them to mobilize the capital they need to unblock their projects. So we have two projects already that have indicated to us they've been able to reduce the interest rate that they're receiving from the financial community having passed through SDIP by over 50% which now allows these projects to move forward. For your questions with regards to the SDIP hub here in ASEAN perhaps I can pass it over to Sure, happy to address the question on AIIB. I look at AIIB as a truly unique and very very positive institution. Unlike other super nationals or multilateral institutions AIIB as you know has a unique focus on infrastructure. That's its mandate, that's what it's going to be doing and it's focused on the Asia region sort of broadly. There is a great opportunity to cooperate together between SDIP and AIIB. I think the capital resources that AIIB will bring to bear through its very very robust equity capitalization will be a differentiating factor. So we view it as very much a complementary institution to what we are trying to achieve and I think will only enhance and aid the efforts to finance Asia's infrastructure requirements. Just if I could add on to that the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank yesterday agreed to become an observer of SDIP so they are very much in the thoughts and a part of the future progress of SDIP. Yes, I just want to echo the previous speakers in terms of I would not see any conflict or if there's a competition every friendly competition between different schemes like the AIIB or AIIB in the recipient countries the more players are it's good for us. We have advantages in terms of choosing what would be the best partner but number two point I want to make is that the need is too big. The need is now and the need in the future given the region or in particularly Cambodia given the development, growth rate, urbanization, connectivity with the country and with the region I think the need infrastructure is so huge so therefore I don't think even with this SDIP it would be sufficient in terms of source financing to finance the gap, the needs infrastructure in this country or in the region. So I think it is one of the way to mobilize resources even in different ways, innovative ways to financing the needs of this country and this region. So I would like to see a kind of partnership and a kind of cooperation at the same time or kind of friendly competition among players so that this country and this region can benefit and eventually we have the good quality infrastructure, connectivity and of course productivity competitiveness by then growth could be sustained and people will have a better life over here. Mr. Kanak, do you want to contribute any thoughts on the pipeline of projects? I know you're engaged with some cross-regional work here and have some visibility in terms of the pipeline of projects. We're just a new member from today so it's hard for me to comment on the pipeline through SDIP but we see this process, I like your choice of saying not unique but innovative in the sense that it will help us I think expand the range of projects of which we're aware. I mean we are, we have other channels and we have a team of people and we have presence in most of the markets around the region so we're constantly looking and discovering and building out due diligence efforts on projects but this expands the range of projects and also I would just comment that we, it helps I think when we have public sector, private sector talking about specifics as opposed to 30,000 feet conceptually there's a trillions of dollars and so forth. We get down and look at actual projects and actual places that have actual people affected in the communities. It helps us focus and get the same vocabulary, right? We can communicate much better and really work more effectively so I think it's important. Casting the net broader for helping us be more aware but also helping us be more efficient and effective in getting to conclusion. On the next step forward for come forward in particular I'd like to share also that we envisage what's going to happen is that this year we'll organize a kind of event workshops on two things under potential projects pipeline which is with due involvement and also on the capacity development on the government side to cope with the new types of scheme but based on the potential pipelines I think we will seek also financing for this fiscal study that's another challenge. I don't think your CDIP would have that kind of money but of course why working with others by collaborating with other institution we would be able to find those financing even sometimes from the government if the government feels so badly in terms of the needs you know so we can also finance and then we will see through the fiscal study what's the problem, what's the risk, what the issue from the investment point of view. You know the economy or financial or social or environmental or technical and then we can talk in dialogue exchange views we can talk about this platform for dialogue to get to understand better each other and found a common ground and once you understand you see that all your trust. I talk about trust when we talk about partnership it's about trust, trust between the investor and the government and of course the government also with people who are beneficially or affected by the project also. This is the scenario that I envisage. With that being said, thank you very much for your time. I'd like to thank the panel. I'd like to officially welcome E-Spring Investments as the 35th member of SDIP and we look forward to having more announcements and more activities over the coming year as the SDIP ASEAN hub takes full flight. So thank you again for your time. Thank you.