Financing infrastructure in developing economies has become an increasingly prominent international policy priority. As part of this, the Australian government and European Union (EU) are looking to improve the complementarity and coordination of their infrastructure financing efforts, especially in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region encompassing the developing economies of South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

This paper makes several suggestions for how this group of like-minded partners can lift their infrastructure financing contribution in the Indo-Pacific, with an emphasis on how Australia and the EU can collaborate within this framework. It recommends that the group should invest substantially more in project preparation activities to expand the available pool of bankable projects, focus on ensuring 'fit-for-purpose' infrastructure standards to improve both the flow and competitiveness of their financing, and expand the scale of their financing efforts by committing greater public resources and making full use of the best available financing instruments and channels, including the multilateral development banks (MDBs).