The US-ASEAN Business Council’s Transport & Infrastructure Committee comprises some of the largest and leading U.S. companies in the Transport & Infrastructure industry. The working group also represents the entire value chain of infrastructure development from roads, ports, airports to rail, energy/power generation, telecommunication to ICT. The Transport & Infrastructure working group is currently led by Chairman Caterpillar and Vice Chair 3M.
The Committee was formed in January 2010 - in direct response to transport & infrastructure emerging as an increasingly important public policy and fiscal priority among governments in the region, especially in view of the 10 ASEAN Member States' attempts in pursuing a regional economic integration agenda in forming the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015. Since inception, the committee has signed Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) “Cooperation in Promoting Direct Investment through Public-Private Partnerships and Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Infrastructure Development” with Indonesia’s BKPM (Investment Economic Coordinating Board) and Vietnam’s Ministry of Planning and Investment. Other initiatives include participation in several international events such as the Infrastructure Development Conference in Indonesia, in April 2010, the Indonesian Clean Energy Business Development in May 2010, led by then U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke and Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) Capacity Building Workshop on PPP Infrastructure Project Modeling in Singapore, in October 2012.
The goal of the Infrastructure Committee is to build valuable opportunities for strategic engagement and partnership between member companies and key governmental and non-governmental stakeholder. Specific objectives include:
- Accelerate infrastructure development in selected ASEAN countries
- Narrow infrastructure project financing gap through public-private partnerships
- Seek ways to improve execution of infrastructure development
- Support ASEAN Connectivity Master Plan