|
MADRID,
Spain—The Philippine government has expressed interest
in availing itself of the budgetary assistance extended
by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to countries that
experience difficulty in coping with high food prices.
ADB
Southeast Asia deputy director general Thomas Crouch
told the BusinessMirror that in the bank’s meeting with
the Philippine delegation to the 41st Annual Governors’
Meeting (AGM), Finance Secretary Margarito Teves had
confirmed the desire of the country for the “continued
availment” of policy and financial assistance from the
ADB.
“[For
years] the ADB and the Philippines have [worked on] a
high-level, policy-based reform agenda [of the country]
on a broad number of fronts such as judicial,
decentralization and the financial sector,” Crouch said
after the press briefing of ADB president Haruhiko
Kuroda on the conclusion of the AGM Tuesday.
“In a
way, yes, he [Kuroda] has confirmed the Philip-pines’
desire to access the funds. Assistance to the financial
sector has formed a large part of our partnership with
the Philippine government,” he added.
Kuroda
has announced that in light of the global food crisis,
the ADB will be extending $500 million in program loans
as immediate budgetary support to countries in the
Asia-Pacific region.
The bank
also pledged to double its lending to $2 billion for
agriculture and natural resources in 2009. In 2008, the
ADB will be lending $1 billion to the sector.
“I am
pleased to announce that ADB will provide $500 million
as immediate budgetary support to the hardest-hit
countries so that they can bring food to the tables of
the vulnerable, poor and needy,” Kuroda said during his
speech at the closing press conference after the
conclusion of the AGM.
“This
money will be made available to these countries to
cushion the impact of rising fiscal burden due to rising
food prices,” he added.
While
Kuroda confirmed that some countries are talking with
ADB regarding the budgetary support, he refused to name
these countries.
He,
however, said the ADB will eventually disclose the
countries’ names and the terms of the program loans to
be extended to these countries.
In his
earlier statement, Kuroda said more than 1 billion
people in the region are seriously impacted by the food
price surge, as food expenditure accounts for 60 percent
of total expenditure in the region. Food and energy
together account for more than 75 percent of total
spending of the poor in the region.
ADB said
that in the long term, its assistance to the
agricultural and natural-resource sector would seek to
enhance productivity, improve market access and deepen
reforms.
Another
outcome of this year’s AGM was the endorsement of ADB’s
Strategy 2020, a new long-term strategy for the
organization. With this in place, ADB will begin
consultations with member- countries on the
organization’s future resource availability.
“We
thank our donor-countries for agreeing on a major
increase to replenish our concessional Asian Development
Fund by an unprecedented amount totaling $11.3 billion,”
Kuroda said in a statement.
ADB’s
next Annual Meeting will be held in Bali, Indonesia in
May 2009. |
