http://www.adb.org/news/adbs-46th-annual-meeting-focus-empowerment 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.
Advice ADB
