3,000-4,000 delegates expected to attend 51st ADB Annual Meeting in Manila

SOME 3,000 to 4,000 delegates are expected to take part in the 51st Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) scheduled today ( May 3) to May 6 in Manila.

The delegates to the meeting include finance ministers and central bank governors of ADB member countries, bankers, representatives from the private sector, civil society, academe, multilateral institutions and the media.

Anchored on the theme “Linking People and Economies for Inclusive Development,” among the issues to be discussed during the 51st meeting are globalization, technology and its impact on jobs and corresponding opportunities, private sector mobilization in funding infrastructure, building climate change res i l ience, ex panding opportunities for women entrepreneurs, and using technology to maximize the skills of aging populations to make development inclusive.

Finance Undersecretary Bayani Agabin, representing Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, who chairs the ADB Board of Governors this year, led the fourth leg of the press launch of the Philippines’ hosting of the Bank’s annual meeting, along with the third series of the country-based Philippine Economic Briefing ( PEB), held at the Marco Polo Hotel on April 19.

The previous press launches of the Philippines’ hosting of the ADB meeting were held in the cit ies of Manila in February, Davao in March and in the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga last April 13 . It was also in Davao City last month that the PEB was first held in the country to brief Mindanao- based business leaders of the Duterte administration’s inclusive growth agenda.

In the Cebu leg of the ADB press launch, Mr. Agabin was joined by a delegation from the Bank including Woochong Um, secretar y of the ADB; Ramesh Subramaniam, director- genera l for Southeast Asia; Kel ly Bird, Philippines country director; and Joven Balbosa, principal country specialist.

According to Mr. Dominguez, the ADB meeting will focus this year on how to “make progress more evenly felt throughout the entire membership of the ADB”, while Mr. Um said the Bank sees “an increasingly complex development landscape emerging — rapid technological progress offering opportunities and challenges, climate change and environmental pressures, aging populations, urbanization and infrastructure gaps.”

Before the start of the 51st Annual Meeting, the ADB held a series of fora and conferences meant to examine the changing global and regional challenges and, more importantly, how the bank can play an “even more effective role” in helping attain inclusive growth for the poorest communities in its membereconomies.

Mr. Um said that “these are exciting times” for this year’s host, the Philippines, which has maintained its steady pace of economic growth, with ADB projecting its GDP to accelerate to 6.8 percent in 2018 “driven by increased investment.”

Ms. Bird, meanwhile, said that “The Philippines is going through a golden age of growth.”

“It ’s been a period of high and sustained economic growth, the longest in 50 years. It’s also been an economic expansion that has occurred in a very sound macroeconomic environment,” Ms. Bird said during the recent launch of the 2018 Asian Development Outlook 2018, in which the ADB projected the Philippine economy to grow by 6.8% for this year and 6.9% for 2019, slightly higher than its full-year average of 6.7% in 2017.

Mr. Um said the ADB is contributing to the Phi lippine government ’ s commitment to sustainable and inclusive growth by “helping improve infrastructure, regional development, publ ic ser v ice deliver y, youth employment and education, and also minimizing disaster risks and expanding financial inclusion.”

He pointed out that last year, loans provided by ADB to the Philippines reached a record- high $ 1.08 billion, with majority of the assistance going to infrastructure- related activities, especially in Mindanao.

ADB, which is based in Manila since its inception in 1966, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive, environmentally sustainable growth and regional integration.

As ADB cont inues it s f i rm commitment to making all of its annual meetings a sustainable event, this year’s Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors will be the first carbon neutral annual meeting ever held in Manila. There have been 15 previous Annual Meetings held in Manila, with the most recent one in 2012 and an earlier small- scale meeting in 2003.