ADB's 46th Annual Meeting - Focus on empowerment
MANILA, Philippines: Ministers, senior government officials and
business leaders, fellow international institutions, and civil society
representatives will gather in Noida, India from May 2-5 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 such as 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: Fuelling 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 Chair of Asia Pacific, Goldman Sachs Asset Management,
Oliver Bolitho, Managing Director and Chair of global sovereign ratings
committee, S and P, John Chambers, President, African Development Bank,
Donald Kaberuka; Vice President, Inter-American Development Bank and
former Finance Minister of Mexico, Santiago Levy Algazi,, Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister of Finance of Thailand, Kittiratt Na-Ranong,
Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University, Amartya Sen;
IMF Deputy Managing Director Naoyuki Shinohara, Chair of the Mizuho
Financial Group, Takashi Tsukamoto and, Professor of Economics, London
School of Economics, John van Reenan.
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 neighbours, and the measures needed to mobilise 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 and how to improve the delivery of public services
to poor and marginalised 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.
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