The Australian government is to establish a AU$2 billion finance facility with the aim of stimulating green energy and infrastructure investment in Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility (SEAIFF) will be managed by Export Finance Australia, the federal government agency which supports the country’s export activities, and will provide loans, guarantees, equity and insurance, designed to promote and encourage Australian trade and investment in clean energy transition and infrastructure development projects in the region.

The initiative formed part of a recommendation by special envoy to Southeast Asia Nicholas Moore who lamented that import and export trade with ASEAN was both “underweight” and “stagnant”. It was announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in Melbourne on 5 March 2024.

Prime Minister Albanese said that Australia’s two-way investment with ASEAN was worth AU$307 billion in 2022 and that two-way trade with ASEAN accounted for AU$178 billion, accounting for 15 per cent of Australia’s trade, a figure which he said was greater than Australia’s trade with Japan or the United States.

As well as the SEAIFF investment, the Prime Minister also highlighted:

• AU$140 million over four years to extend the Partnerships for Infrastructure Programme. This programme is intended to improve regional infrastructure development and attract more diverse, quality infrastructure finance;
• Appointing ten business champions to facilitate greater commercial links between Australia and ASEAN economies;
• The launch of regional technology “Landing Pads” in Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City. These pads would “provide on-the-ground support for Australian businesses to boost technology service exports to Southeast Asian markets, following the establishment of the initial “Landing Pad” in Singapore in 2017”;
• Improving visa access for Southeast Asia. Business visitor visas will be extended from three to five years and the ten-year Frequent Traveller stream will be extended to eligible ASEAN Member States and Timor-Leste.

The Prime Minister was reported as saying that “acting on climate change is an environmental necessity for our region – it is also a transformative economic opportunity”.

The Australian government estimates that Southeast Asia will need an additional 454 gigawatts of generation capacity between now and 2050 and that the transition would employ more than 5 million people.

Mr Moore told the summit that the demand for green project engineering design, construction and advisory services would be valued at over AU$20 billion a year by 2030. Mr Moore is also said to be looking into ways of simplifying the foreign investment review process and to investigate the feasibility of introducing “political risk insurance”.