WASHINGTON, April 19 -- As representatives of the 57 founding countries gather later this month to prepare for the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a former World Bank official suggested that the new institution could draw three important lessons from the operational experiences of multilateral development banks over the last five decades to become more successful.

"The first is how important it is to be client-focused, to make sure the clients, the developing countries, to decide what's in their best interests," said Vikram Nehru, a former World Bank chief economist for East Asia and a senior associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-D.C. based think tank.

"Ensuring the developing countries in the driver's seat is absolutely central" to the success of the China-proposed AIIB, Nehru told Xinhua in a recent interview on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

As a new multilateral institution focusing exclusively on infrastructure development, the AIIB, said China, will be dominated by developing countries, and their requests and demands need to be respected.

The establishment of the AIIB is an attempt to help fill Asia's infrastructure investment gap and promote economic development in the region, China's vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao said Friday in a speech at the Atlantic Council, another U.S. think tank, noting that India and other Asian countries are now facing the same challenge of infrastructure bottleneck.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimated in 2009 that Asia needs about 8 trillion U.S. dollars in investment by 2020 to improve the region's battered infrastructure to keep its economies humming.

The second lesson for the AIIB is to be "humble" and " constantly learning from local circumstances, local facts and experiences from other countries to see what works best," said Nehru, who served in a number of senior management positions in the World Bank from 1981 to 2011.

Representatives of the 57 founding countries, which were finalized Wednesday, will convene at the end of April, and May to deliberate on the AIIB charter, of which management structure will be the most important part.

China has said the AIIB will draw experiences from other multilateral development banks and avoid their detours so as to be more cost-effective and efficient. The new bank will feature a three-level management structure that includes a board of governors, board of directors and senior management, according to the Chinese Finance Ministry.

Zhu said there are many debates about whether or not the AIIB should have a resident board of directors commonly adopted by the World Bank and the ADB. The intention of these debates is to " increase efficiency and improve the capacity" of the bank to better serve the clients, but it will be finally decided by coming negotiations among founding members, he said.

Nehru believes it's a good idea to have a non-resident board of directors for the AIIB, as it would help make a clear distinction between the board and the management, and also have great accountability.

"When you have a non-resident board, then when the board meets periodically, it has to focus on the policies of the institution and its strategy, leaving up to the management to implement those policies and that strategy," he said.

The third lesson for the AIIB "would be to cooperate with other institutions" to apply the best standards, said Nehru, noting that cooperation between the AIIB and existing institutions will make sure developing countries "get the best services" from multilateral development bank community.

The heads of the World Bank and the ADB have welcomed the AIIB with open arms, pledging to strengthen cooperation with the new multilateral institution.

"Infrastructure needs in the developing world are enormous. They are enormous in Asia for AIIB. Our full expectation is that we will continue to work closely," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Thursday at a press conference.

With initial subscribed capital of 50 billion U.S. dollars and planned authorized capital of 100 billion dollars, China is also aware that the bank and its members alone cannot bridge the funding gap in Asia.

The AIIB is intended to play a complementary role alongside existing multilateral development banks, and China welcomes the World Bank and the ADB to increase infrastructure investment, Zhu said.

Nehru suggested that the AIIB could start cooperating with the World Bank and the ADB through co-financing for existing infrastructure projects which are already in the pipeline.

If the AIIB wants to cooperate with the private sector on financing individual infrastructure projects and raise capital from international financial markets, it has to meet high international standards in terms of environmental evaluation and social safeguards, Nehru noted.

"We agree with high standards, and opinions will be gathered through negotiations and reflected in the formal legal document," Zhu echoed.

With the signing of the charter slated for the end of June, the AIIB looks set to be launched by the end of the year.

If the AIIB could draw valuable lessons from existing multilateral development banks, there is no reason to believe that this new initiative could not be successful, many global finance officials agreed during the spring meetings.

Nehru said it's "quite remarkable" for the AIIB to already have 57 founding members from Asia, Europe and the Middle East, as the ADB has just 67 members today after so many decades of operation.

"I believe Chinese authorities want to have a modern, global, and high-quality institution," he added.