China pledges $40bn for silk road fund

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday said the country will contribute 40 billion U.S. dollars to set up a Silk Road Fund at a dialogue meeting on strengthening connectivity and improving cooperation in the country's neighborhood.
The goal of the fund is to "break the connectivity bottleneck" in Asia, Xi said when speaking at the dialogue meeting with leaders of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Tajikistan, and representatives of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
He said that the Silk Road Fund will be "open", and welcomed investors from Asia and beyond to "actively" take part in the project.