Another year, another long-term strategic blueprint-style plan for the Asian Development Bank. This year, however, the bank’s planning is underpinned by sizeable increase to its resources. The ADB board has approved a tripling of the bank’s capital base, to US$165bn (its first increase in 14 years). The bank is also facing the prospect of genuine social and humanitarian crisis in the region if the global recession deepens much further. At last year’s annual conference the ADB made a point of de-emphasising front-line aid on the view that Asia...Read more
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A particular theme seems to define the ADB agenda every year, depending on what economic/political/financial forces are engulfing the region. The past 12 months have all been about the credit crisis and the dwindling capital supply available to Asian SMEs. The ADB has tackled the problem at its most essential level: trade finance.
About US$50trn of the word's wealth was destroyed in 2008 – or one year's worth of GDP, according to a report released in mid-March by the Asian Development Bank. Asia accounted for nearly US$9.62trn or 19.25% of those losses.
The role of organisations such as the Asian Development Bank has become critical in responding to the global financial crisis. Efforts are being made to boost trade that would revive the global economy. The ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda talks to Prakash Chakravarti about the bank’s efforts in that regard and shares his views on the potential for an alternative international currency as well as Asian monetary integration.
Despite a 22-year stint with the ADB, Rajat Nag, managing director general, feels he has been with the bank for a very short time. The enthusiasm and excitement he had when he joined the bank still lives because of what Asia has gone through. He talks to Prakash Chakravarti about the ADB’s achievements and the way forward.
As the financial crisis blooms into a global economic recession, Asia’s fragile political arrangements and democracies are coming under stress. Asian politics can be tumultuous at the best of times – throw in two wars in the Middle East, increasing concerns about economic dislocation in China and ongoing power struggles in Thailand and Malaysia, and the region’s political risk problems start to mount.
Multilateral development banks are political beasts. In this article an ex-ADB staffer talks about the historic and organisational issues that complicate the aid logistics of development banks, and the urgent need for reform.
The oil price spikes may be a year behind us, but they were a timely reminder of the necessity of addressing Asia’s long-term energy needs. The ADB is rolling out all manner of sensible, practical solutions to bring energy to the people, and in an environmentally sustainable manner.
Corruption is a serious problem in the developing world and poses a significant hurdle to one of the ADB’s fundamental objectives of poverty reduction as the consequent economic hit is to the poor. Projects involving development finance institutions such as the ADB have become more vulnerable in the aftermath of the global financial turmoil.
As part of its corruption fighting measures, the ADB independently investigates dozen of cases every year. It manages to process this volume of casework partly because it does not publish those names it deems guilty of corruption.