ADB’s Future Strategy: Would It Really Matter to the Poor?

Hemantha Withanage[1] and Ronald Masayda[2]

NGO Forum on ADB

September 2007

Introduction

The initial implementation review of and the multi-stakeholder consultations on the Asian Development Bank’s Long Term Strategy Framework (LTSF) bear close scrutiny and watching for instructive insights on the accomplishments or failings of the Bank’s anti-poverty agenda in the first five years. It is also important to carefully monitor and observe how the results of this review exercise would affect the Bank’s poverty reduction directions, priorities and activities in the next 10 years.

The ADB says the basic premise for the LTSF review are attributable to the changing regional and global trends to wit: unprecedented high rates of growth, global capital flows into the region, the co-existence of high rates of savings along with the need for high investment rates, and significant adverse environmental implications associated with the high growth rates. The undertaking, therefore, should give pause to the Bank to assess whether its over-all prognosis of a poverty-free region by 2015 is indeed reachable and realistic.

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