Heads of international institutions on Saturday shared ideas on how to move forward towards a sustainable economic recovery at the spring meetings of the 2021 International Finance Forum (IFF).

IFF is a non-profit and non-governmental unofficial international forum organization headquartered in Beijing. 

Sustainable infrastructure investment will become the most efficient way to notch up economic recovery in the future, said Jin Liqun, president of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). 

Jin said that almost half of low-income countries are now caught in a deep debt crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

"Multilateral banks, including the AIIB, believe that these countries need to be provided with new financing to repay their debts and support their long-term development," he said. 

"To ensure economic recovery, countries must achieve cautious transformation and ease the impact on laborers through income support and labor market policies," said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

"We should further support enterprises with sustainable operation capacity and implement effective bankruptcy and restructuring frameworks to reduce the traumatic effects of corporate bankruptcy," the IMF head added. 

Georgieva also said that the world must move towards a new climate economy to avoid large-scale economic and financial disturbances. 

"China's aim of achieving carbon neutrality before 2060 demonstrates an important leadership role and highlights the global consensus reached in this regard," she said. 

IMF research shows that investing in green infrastructure and implementing carbon pricing at the same time can increase global GDP by 0.7 percent per year for the next 15 years, while also creating millions of jobs. 

"Small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of most developing countries and emerging economies. Only by improving these enterprises' access to technology and financing can they secure better recovery," said Li Yong, director general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.