ADB’s 46th Annual Meeting to Focus on Empowerment

18 04 2013 MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Ministers and senior government officials, business leaders, fellow international institutions, and civil society representatives are set to gather in Noida, India from 2-5 May for the 46th Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which will focus on empowerment through development.
The anticipated 4,000 participants, including global media, will discuss how vulnerable groups can better access economic opportunities and social services like health and education. Asia and the Pacific’s booming economies have seen a dramatic reduction in poverty over the past two decades but the region is still home to two thirds of the world’s extreme poor, and there has been a steep rise in inequality of incomes and access to basic services.
This year’s Governors’ Seminar, Beyond Factory Asia: Fueling Growth in a Changing World, will examine the future role of factory-driven manufacturing in the region, alternative growth sources, and how individual countries can move up the production value chain to avoid becoming mired in a middle income trap.
Notable public and private sector officials expected to speak at the seminars include: Oliver Bolitho, Chair of Asia Pacific, Goldman Sachs Asset Management; John Chambers, Managing Director and Chair of global sovereign ratings committee, S&P; Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank; Santiago Levy Algazi, Vice President of Inter-American Development Bank and former Finance Minister of Mexico; Kittiratt Na-Ranong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for Thailand; Amartya Sen, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University; IMF Deputy Managing Director Naoyuki Shinohara; Takashi Tsukamoto, Chair of the Mizuho Financial Group; and John van Reenan, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.
Seminars will look at the challenge of creating productive, meaningful jobs in Asia, the steps needed to quicken and deepen regional integration ― including South Asia’s fast expanding links to its Southeast Asian neighbors ― and the measures needed to mobilize more long term finance for Asia’s huge infrastructure needs. Sessions will be held on development aid, and ways to boost falling levels of assistance; as well as how to improve the delivery of public services to poor and marginalized groups; and financing universal health care.
The potential threat to Asia’s future growth from the ongoing economic slump in the US and Europe will come under the microscope, while a new ADB study on disaster risk management will look at how the region can better protect itself from increasingly severe and frequent natural calamities ― which have killed more than 70,000 people a year in the past decade and caused direct annual economic losses of around $35 million.
Alongside the Annual Meeting, finance ministers and other officials of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the People’s Republic of Chain, Japan and Republic of Korea, (known as ASEAN + 3) will also hold discussions.