Building Bridges? PGII versus BRI

The recently launched Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII)—a G-7 initiative to mobilize $600 billion in loans and grants for sustainable, quality infrastructure projects in developing and emerging economies—aims to provide much-needed investment toward achieving global development goals. G-7 leaders are not hiding their secondary motivation: regaining some of the influence that advanced democracies have yielded to China over a decade of its infrastructure investment through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Several factors, however, minimize head-to-head competition between PGII and BRI, write Elizabeth Losos, senior fellow at the Nicholas Institute, and T. Robert Fetter, senior fellow at the Duke Sanford Center for International Development, for The Brookings Institution's Future Development blog. Losos and Fetter write that, if successful, PGII could instead achieve something potentially more meaningful than initially intended through its competition with BRI: a race to the top in quality infrastructure investments.