BEIJING: India is set to sign a memorandum on Friday to be one of the 21 founding members of the newly established Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), an initiative by China.

An Indian finance ministry delegation has arrived here to take part in the signing ceremony of the memorandum to set up the bank to be attended by top Chinese leaders, officials told PTI.

Representatives of 21 Asian economies including India who are willing to be AIIB founding members finalised a draft memorandum during a meeting here in September, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying told a media briefing here.

The memorandum was expected to be signed by them on Friday. China welcomes India to participate in the AIIB, she said.

The details of the memorandum are not known. China may retain substantial voting rights while India too was expected to get a fair amount of voting rights commensurate with its size.

A number of South Asian countries including Pakistan, SRO Lank, Bangladesh and Maldives were expected to join the list of founding members besides some of the South East Asian countries.

"The purpose why China proposed to create AIIB is to promote the economic development of Asia and creation of the wealth and inter connectivity of infrastructure through investment in investment and through productive fields," Hua said.

The AIIB will carry out close cooperation with other bilateral and multilateral institutions and promote regional initiatives and partnership and jointly deal with common challenges in the filed of development.

The bank was expected to be formed with capital of US$ 50 billion mostly to be funded by China has created big buzz as it was projected to be a rival to Asian Development Bank (ADB) in which Japan plays a key role as well as World Bank and IMF.

China was keen about Indian participation and invitation in this regard was conveyed by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his first meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of BRICS summit in Brazil in July this year where a decision to set up the BRICS Bank was also made.

India would head the Presidency of the BRICS bank whose headquarters would be based in Shanghai.