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Friday, March 29, 2024

4k delegates seen for ADB meeting

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As many as 4,000 delegates are expected to take part in the 51st Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank scheduled on May 3 to 6 this year in Manila.

In a statement, ADB Secretary Woochong Um said 3,000 have already registered with the bank for the Manila conference.

“Aside from the main participants—the [ADB] governors, we’ll have about 4,000 participants this year. We already have 3,000 registered so far and usually the last two weeks is when we start to see an acceleration in terms of registration,” Um said.

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 resilience, expanding opportunities for women entrepreneurs, and using technology to maximize the skills of aging populations to make development inclusive.

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Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III earlier said the ADB meeting this year would focus on how to “make progress more evenly felt throughout the entire membership of the ADB, while 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.”

Um said the ADB was contributing to the Philippine government’s commitment to sustainable and inclusive growth by “helping improve infrastructure, regional development, public service delivery, youth employment and education, and minimizing disaster risks and expanding financial inclusion.”

Um said 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.

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