Myanmar – the missing jigsaw piece

Source: Reuters/Arko Datta A woman walks past a 40 feet high pyramid structure made from plastic buckets and bottles at Kala Ghoda arts festival in Mumbai Manila is a familiar setting for most ADB staff. Even those accustomed to fighting the city’s traffic on the commute to the bank’s Ortigas base, however, are worried about the strain this year’s annual meeting will place on Manila’s creaking transport infrastructure. The traffic congestion in Manila is an all-too-common problem in Asia’s fast-growing cities. It is the result of years of under...

Source: Reuters/Claro Cortes Focusing on precision – a craftsman examines a watch at Beijing. IFR Asia: What do you hope to get out of the Manila meetings? Kuroda: I think it is a good opportunity for governors to discuss medium- and long-term issues. In the past, because of the crisis, particularly after the Lehman shock, governors focused more on medium-term issues, such as recession and so on. Now, the crisis may not be completely over, but for Asia it’s not a crisis any more. So, governors will focus more on long-term issues, such as...

Source: Reuters/Damir Sagolj A Buddhist monk looks through the binoculars at Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon Asian economies are on track to expand by 6.9% in 2012 and 7.3% in 2013, according to the ADB’s latest estimates. Compared with the puny growth rates in the US and Europe, the region is performing well. At the same time, Asia’s two biggest countries are floating the idea of a new emerging-markets development bank. Is the ADB in danger of becoming irrelevant? The short answer is, of course, an emphatic no. Almost 700m people in Asia still live...

Source: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton A sign is displayed on the door of the European Commission offices in Dublin The global financial crisis has passed, but the fallout is still being felt in Asia. As if financing US$750bn of Asian infrastructure each year is not enough of a challenge, the European sovereign debt crisis has left policymakers facing the additional headache of having to do so without the support of many of their traditional lending partners. Many of the European banks that had bankrolled projects across Asia before the European...

Source: Reuters/Bobby Yip Hong Kong players form a scrum during their HSBC Asian 5 Nations rugby match against South Korea in Hong Kong Even the most enthusiastic proponent of the single currency must now admit that the European model is, at best, flawed. To many Asian observers, looking on from thousands of kilometres away, the system appears broken beyond repair. As Europe struggles to hold its many members together, Asian policymakers can be forgiven for wondering if a closer economic union is a goal worth fighting for. Indeed, many...

The ADB and Asean finance ministers are poised to announce the first commitments to the Asean Infrastructure Fund at this year’s annual meeting. Here’s the lowdown on the fund. What’s the big idea? Dreamed up in 2006, the Asean Infrastructure Fund is designed to boost public lending to fund the region’s infrastructure deficit and improve connectivity. At the same time, it also promises to provide member countries with a regional alternative to invest their reserves closer to home. The AIF will begin lending to sovereign-backed projects, but...

Source: Reuters/Claro Cortes An election worker scans each ballot at a polling station in Ulan Bator. In the capital markets, a high-profile fraud case tends to trigger a correction. Asset prices are often adjusted across an entire sector as investors worry that the same thing may happen to them. The highest-profile scandal of last year – involving alleged fraud at Canadian-listed Chinese timber company Sino-Forest – went one step further, freezing similar companies out of the international capital markets altogether. Investors realised that...

Source: Reuters/Pichi Chuang People work on the roof of the main stadium of the World Games 2009, which is made of solar panels, in Kaohsiung last month were quietly putting the finishing touches to a gleaming array of solar panels on the roof of the ADB’s Manila headquarters. Aside from meeting some of the bank’s electricity needs – not to mention improving the aesthetics of an otherwise drab, flat-roofed compound – the project is designed to illustrate that green energy projects can be feasible in an urban environment. It may be more of a...

Source: Reuters/Alex de la Rosa Thousands of pedicab drivers paralyse traffic leading to the presidential palace in Manila. Having worked hard to improve its reputation in the global capital markets, the Philippines was forced to watch with envy late last year as neighbour Indonesia won an upgrades to investment-grade status, first from Fitch and then from Moody’s. In the bond markets, there is no contest – the Philippines is known as a sophisticated sovereign borrower with a liquid and well-managed credit curve. Even after its neighbour’s...