Muhith to attend ADB meet in Frankfurt this week

Finance Minister AMA Muhith will attend the 49th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which will focus on key topics for sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific.

Germany will host the ADB annual meeting in Frankfurt on May 2-5, under the "cooperating for sustainability" theme, to connect finance and development professionals and exchange ideas and achieve tangible results.

Around 3,000 delegates including top policymakers, business leaders, journalists, academics, civil society, and development institution representatives are expected to attend the meeting.

This year’s meeting will focus on major topics such as clean energy and climate change, sustainable supply and production chains, technical and vocational education and training; employment, cities, infrastructure, and urban development, information and communications technology, international development, economics and finance for sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific. All these topics will be discussed keeping in mind the issue of sustainability.

Germany's energy transition and possible applications for Asia will be shown in the meeting. The ADB marks its 50th year of operations in 2016, and its latest annual report released last week showed that the bank’s total funds surged to $27.17 billion last year -- the highest in ADB's history.

The total included $16.29 billion in approvals for loans and grants, $141 million for technical assistance, and $10.74 billion for co-financing, which increased by a record 16 percent.

Disbursements, a key factor in improving aid effectiveness, also hit a new record of $12.22 billion in 2015, an increase of 22 percent over the previous year.

The ADB has been supporting Bangladesh since 1973, with its first field office established in 1982. Bangladesh is a major recipient of concessional resources from ADB's Asian Development Fund.

The ADB has provided Bangladesh with $17.2 billion for 259 loans, $244.5 million for 411 technical assistance projects and $787.1 million under 35 grants.