THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced the appointment of a new country director for its Philippine Country office this month.

Newly appointed Philippine country director Neeraj Jain takes over the reins from Tom Crouch, who was promoted to deputy director general for the ADB’s Southeast Asia Department.

Jain has been with the ADB for 12 years and counts many years of the development experience in Asia and Pacific. He is an Indian national and holds a postgraduate degree in economics.

Prior to his appointment, Jain was country director of the ADB’s Tajikistan Resident Mission from 2005 to 2007. He has also worked as ADB economist and relationship manager for the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Kazakhstan.

“ADB has a unique relationship with the Philippines since we have our headquarters in Manila. The Philippines is a strategic partner of ADB and I look forward to working once again in building the ADB-Philippines development partnership by working closely with government, civil society and other stakeholders,” Jain said in a statement.

The Philippines Country Office was established in September 2000 at the ADB’s headquarters in Manila, and is dedicated to ADB’s operations in the Philippines.

The country is a founding member of the ADB and is the bank’s 11th-largest shareholder. It is the fifth-largest borrower, with the over $9 billion in loans since 1966, accounting for about 8 percent of total lending, and is one of the bank’s largest clients for private-sector lending and equity investments.

Last year the bank extended a total of $595.5 million worth of funds to the Philippines. In its 2007 Annual Report, the ADB said it extended a total of $583.8 million worth of loans and $11.7 million worth of grants and technical assistance funds.

The ADB approved $9 million worth of grants and $2.7 million worth of technical assistance funds.

In 2007 the ADB approved a total of $10.1 billion worth of loans last year representing a 37-percent increase over the total loans it approved last year, the highest in the bank’s 41-year history.

Pakistan was the largest borrower with $2 billion worth of loans or 20 percent of the total loans the ADB extended last year.

The operational sector with the biggest share of loans was transport and communications with $3.9 billion, or 39 percent of total loans, more than double the amount in 2006.

Loans with government guarantees last year totaled $9.2 billion for 61 projects. Of this amount, $7.4 billion came from the ordinary capital resources of the ADB, while the balance was sourced from the concessional Asian Development Fund (ADF).

WITH barely two months left to decide on the fate of the Comprehensive Agrarian-Reform Program (CARP), agrarian-reform advocates warned that hunger and poverty may worsen should Congress fail to pass a bill funding the program’s extension for another 5 to 10 years.

IF the country seems to be running out of economic steam due to the global growth slowdown and soaring commodity prices, the Philippines, like many other developing countries, still has an ace to play in global trade, according to the United Nations Trade and Development (Unctad).

AS the Senate resumed its sessions Monday, independent think tank IBON Foundation again urged senators to reject the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa), saying that the P365 billion in investments that the deal will supposedly bring is too high a price to pay for the death of the local manufacturing sector.

THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced the appointment of a new country director for its Philippine Country office this month.

The militant farmers belonging to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) on Tuesday rejected Sen. Edgardo Angara’s proposal to privatize the National Food Authority (NFA) owing to the agency’s failure to address the rice crisis.

THE Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) on Friday convened industry stakeholders and other government agencies in crafting a National Land Transport Policy Framework (NLTPF).

DAVAO CITY—Philippine Airlines would add another Airbus flight to this city beginning Thursday to decongest the volume of traffic in this route that has built up since the Holy Week holidays.