LUXEMBOURG, July 12-- With nearly 100 members, the China-initiated Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has achieved remarkable results since its launch over three years ago, Luxembourg's Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna told Xinhua on Friday. "We are glad we contributed from the beginning to the setting-up of AIIB, because this bank is a real success story," Gramegna said in an interview during the fourth annual meeting of the AIIB, which is the first annual meeting to be held outside Asia, adding that hosting the meeting shows Luxembourg's commitment to the development bank. Recalling the initial motivation to join the AIIB's founding, the 61-year-old minister who actually witnessed the birth and growth of the bank at its very early stage, gave three main reasons. Firstly, Luxembourg believes in multilateralism. Gramegna underlined that multilateralism is the only way by which people can solve the issues like poverty and climate change around the world. Against the backdrop of growing unilateralism and nationalism, Gramegna remains optimistic about the great future of multilateralism because "it has worked well in the past." From his perspective, the Paris Agreement on climate change signed in 2017 and the AIIB launched in 2016 are two multilateral events which will reverberate over the next couple of years and decades, much more than some sporadic unilateral move. Thanks to international cooperation, around 1 billion people have been able to get out of poverty, as water supply, access to transport and other services have been overwhelmingly improved, Gramegna noted. |