The World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and China International Contractors Association (CHINCA) joined forces to inform the Chinese business community.

The Business Opportunities Seminar for Contractors and Consulting Firms was held in Beijing on October 14, 2016. Over 130 participants representing large contractors and consulting firms attended this event.

This one-day event had speakers from all four organizations who briefed the participants about their organizations, volume and characteristics of their infrastructure portfolio, procurement and safeguards procedures. All presenters aimed to inform and equip the business community with knowledge to help them fully understand the specifics of working under internationally funded projects and think strategically to make better and more informed business decisions. The World Bank's presentation on its Procurement Framework which became effective in July 2016, got significant attention. ADB briefly presented its agenda for modernizing its procurement procedures and explained that it was going to be done in a very expeditious way. ADB plans to get advantage from 3 years' extensive work and consultative process carried out by the World Bank on developing its procurement framework and its objective is to issue the new procurement policy, nearly fully harmonized with the WB's procurement framework, by early 2017. AIIB explained that it will complement and cooperate with others MDBs to jointly address the huge infrastructure development needs in Asia, and similar to those MDBs, it will have high standards on governance, accountability, financial, procurement, and environmental and social policies. The operational principle of the AIIB is "Lean, Clean and Green".

The vice-president of CHINCA, was very grateful to the three MDBs for organizing this event and stated that infrastructure is one of the major means of stimulating national economy and China' enterprises are increasingly going into international markets. CHINCA's representative introduced the latest development of Chinese Contractors' business overseas, and the services that CHINCA provides to its members such as guidance and opportunities for accessing finance when contractors engage in overseas business.

One of the largest international contractors in China shared its experience in working in World Bank and ADB's financed contracts. A total of 64 Chinese Contractors are among the top 250 of the 2015 Engineering News Record (ENR) of Top Global Contractors. Fifteen firms among the Top 2015 ENR 250 Chinese contractors were present in this event. Chinese contractors bid frequently in contracts financed by the international financial institutions all over the world. In the last years, Chinese contractors won in average 56 % and 40% of WB's financed contracts in East Asia and Pacific region and in Africa region respectively.

The Q&A sessions were very interactive and lively. It was interesting to see the unique voice and common views of three MDBs in answering participants' questions related to wide range of issues such as participation of State Owned Enterprises, importance of use of bid and performance securities and qualification and evaluation criteria. The business community received a clear message on how aligned the MDBs procurement procedures are and how well their procedures are designed for fair treatment of business community when bidding in MDB financed projects.

Participants were pleased with the success of this knowledge sharing event. They arrived with many questions and left with a full tool-kit on how to maximize success in MDB financed contracts.