IFR Special Reports

Foreword

Since the Asian Development Bank was created in 1966, the multilateral institution has been facing the brunt of criticism from NGOs and wrestling politics with its 67 members. Corruption in the region is deep-rooted and the political situation as always remains volatile. In this kind of environment, the ADB’s ambitions of eliminating poverty from the region and promoting financial and economic integration seem an impossible dream. But it is after all in the business of optimism. And surely there is a difference between a motionless arm-chair...Read more

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Need for more political will

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) played a critical role during the global financial crisis. It provided financial assistance and persevered with its dream of creating a financially and economically cooperative Asian region. There has been progress in regional cooperation and the ADB’s financial assistance has helped the recovery but the job is not yet over. Talking to IFR Asia’s Shankar Ramakrishnan, ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda shares his views on the challenges the region and the bank face and calls for greater political will to get the...

The right path

The Asian Development Bank’s strategy 2020 unveiled in 2008 is an important document that focussed the institution’s efforts into five core areas. After two years of its implementation, the bank’s managing director general Rajat Nag explains to Shankar Ramakrishnan why it was a step in the right direction and shares his views about regional cooperation and the rising poverty challenge in the region.

Asian IMF dream lives on in CMIM agreement

The Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) or the squashed dream of an Asian form of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is making a veiled comeback in the form of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM) Agreement, which came into effect on March 24. The CMIM is a multilateral currency swap contract that covers all the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus Japan, Korea and China.

Climate change threat most serious for Asia Pacific

The Asia Pacific region is likely to suffer the most from the adverse impacts of climate change. Three recent studies funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) underscore just how seriously the consequences of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten the key drivers of development in Asia and the Pacific – the region’s food, fuel, and people.

Post-disaster recovery

Asia Pacific is extremely prone to natural disasters. In 2008, out of the top 10 countries worldwide with the highest number of disaster-related deaths, nine were in Asia. From 1996 to 2005, disasters caused over US$670bn in direct material losses worldwide with economic losses 20 times more in developing countries compared with developed countries.

Connecting Central Asia to the world

If you want to get a sense of the challenges facing Central Asian trade, take a look at a map. Landlocked countries, some of them with at least two other nations between them and the sea in any direction, harsh terrain and intricate, apparently random Soviet-era borders, often drawn without regard for communities or trade routes.

Building a bridge

For many years now, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has being trying to coax the private sector to take a leading role in its projects and initiatives. The logic is straightforward: the ADB’s own assets as a lender are finite and inadequate for the social and infrastructure challenges the region faces, but if the bank can be a catalyst for private sector investment, then impossible funding targets become potentially achievable.

Strong pulse beats in local currency bond markets

Domestic bond markets in emerging Asia have seen exponential growth in the past two years despite the global financial crisis that crippled international capital markets. But to keep this growth momentum intact, it is critical that the region’s policy makers take decisive steps to boost liquidity in secondary markets and widen the investor and issuer base.

China’s great development challenge

During the National People’s Congress in March, president Wen Jiabao characterised China as a “developing country” with a “weak economic basis”, citing growing gaps between the rich and poor, and the cities and rural areas. Wen said it may take another 100 years for China to reach developed country status. This attempt to deflate global expectations of China is disingenuous at best, given that its economy continues to grow at 9%–10% per year, it just surpassed Germany as the world’s largest exporter, its foreign exchange reserves (the world’s...

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