ADB to Focus on Fighting Poverty
The Foreign Post
April 27 - 30, 2000
MANILA - The Asian Development Bank expects to forge agreements with 14 of the region's poorest countries this year on strategies to fight poverty, bank President Tadao Chino says.
The Manila-based lender this year starts its new mission to focus its resources against the debilitating poverty that affects hundreds of million Asians shut down from decades of economic growth.
The idea is to funnel loans to areas with the aim of achieving high multiplier effects to raise incomes or allow wider access to education and basic services, rather than to big ticket projects.
"Since the board of directors of ADB approved unanimously the poverty reduction strategy in November last year, we have been making an all uot effort to implement that strategy," explained bank president Tadao Chino, in an interview ahead of the bank's forthcoming annual meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Earlier this month, Bangladesh agreed to receive up to US$500 million annually for 10 years from the ADB under a scheme to "intervene" in key economic sectors to slash poverty 10 35 percent of the total population by 2005, and below 25 percent by 2010.
Mongolia agreed to a similar, though much smaller, arrangement.
"We hope to have 12 more such partnership agreements in place within this year," Chino said. Although he did not identify the other target countries or the amounts involved, aides said they were likely to include Indonesia and Nepal.
"We aim to cover most of our developing countries by the end of 2001," Chino said.
Some non-governmental organization shave pledged to hold demonstrations during the May 6-8 ADB meeting to focus public attention on what they call the negative social impacts of the bank's strategy.
ADB is subscribed to by 58 member countries and territories, comprising 42 from Asia and 16 donor nations from North America and Europe. Japan and the United States are the largest contributors.
Since taking over the helm at ADB last year from fellow Japanese Mitsuo Sato, Chino engineered the consolidation of the bank's objectives into one overriding mission: reducing the number of Asians living in debilitating poverty.
The bank's board of directors formally approved the radical policy shift in November 1999.
"I am generally happy with the progress so far. Our poverty reduction strategy will provide a framework with which our over-reaching goal of poverty reduction will be pursued in our operations," Chino said.
He acknowledged that poverty is a "multi-dimensional and complex" issue, which differs between countries and even within nations.
"So we feel it is extremely important to understand poverty which is specific to each country," Chino commented.
After more than three decades of high-flying economic growth, few imagine that 70 percent of the world's poor people still live in Asia, a region where 900 million people survive on less than a dollar a day.
By martin Abbugao