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MADRID,
Spain—More
than 500 liters of coffee, 3,000 kilograms of biscuits
and bite-size cakes, and 4,500 bottles of water are
expected to be consumed at the Asian Development Bank’s
(ADB) 41st Annual Governors’ Meeting (AGM), still making
it an event of huge proportions.
Located
in a 21,000-sq-m space, the AGM’s venue, the Feria de
Madrid (Ifema), is at the outskirts of
Madrid
and is less than an hours ride on the metro from
downtown.
Due to
the sheer size of the venue, the ADB buses circle the
entire compound every few minutes to taxi around 3,000
participants from the Metro station of Campo de las
Naciones, which is just outside the South Gate of the
Ifema, to the main entrance of the AGM at the North Gate
of the venue.
However,
the AGM in
Tokyo last year, was located in a bigger convention compound. This
was only fitting since last year marked the 40th year of
the ADB.
Meanwhile, the AGM, which officially started on
Saturday, is expected to be attended by 35 finance and
economy ministers from various countries, six Central
Bank governors, as well as delegation leaders and
representatives from 67 shareholding countries that form
part of the ADB.
There
are also 144 nongovernment organization (NGO)
representatives registered along with 316 journalists of
which 228 are Spanish.
To date,
however, no final count of all participants to the AGM
can officially be put out as registration continues.
Nonetheless, the ADB Secretariat has registered 300
participants onsite on top of the 2,900 who registered
online.
Last
year the AGM registered 3,300 participants. The ADB
Secretariat said that only 500 of the registered
participants failed to attend the event.
All
participants are provided Ifema maps that identify the
location of all seminar and meeting rooms, offices of
ADB officials and areas for stakeholders like NGOs.
For
journalists, a
Media Center
was created to accommodate not only journalists but to
become the venue for open business sessions during the
AGM. The media center is almost the size of the ground
floor of the World Trade Center in Pasay City.
Manpower, meanwhile, include around 2,000 people
involved in logistics. This group includes suppliers,
fitters, waiting staff, conference hostesses,
translators, technicians, volunteers and others who will
provide service support throughout the six-day event.
On the
technical side, there are 340 computers with English
softwares, eight with Japanese, and around 200 printers
and photocopiers. There are almost 400 telephone lines
that require a 1-gigabyte network to facilitate the
identification, registration, and accreditation process.
Further,
there are 20 kilometers of cable that will support audio
and video connections and 71,000 watts of sound and 352
microphones. There will be 61 projectors and plasma
screens and 39 simultaneous translation cabins.
The
meeting also used more than 4,000 pieces of furniture
and fittings, which were specifically built for the AGM,
1,100 plugs fitted and more than 15,000 meters of
decoration. |
