The BusinessMirror prints in full Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima’s speech at the annual meetings of the ADB in Frankfurt, Germany.
Chairman Fuchtel, President Nakao, fellow governors, ladies and gentlemen, a pleasant good morning to all of you. First, I wish to extend Philippine delegation’s sincere appreciation to the warm reception of the people and immense preparation made by the German government for hosting this year’s annual meetings here in Frankfurt.
This year the Bank prepares for its 50th anniversary. This milestone carries a special significance: we have hosted the Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquarters in Manila since its inauguration. In the past few years, the Philippines has been experiencing rapid economic progress, aided by our robust partnership with institutions, like the ADB.
The ADB has given its steadfast support as we accelerated infrastructure investments through our Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Programs and invested heavily in our people to reap our demographic dividend, helping us expand our conditional-cash transfer capacity by almost nine times to cover what is now 4.62 million households. These are but a few examples of the productive partnership we’ve shared.
Thus, for the Philippine delegation, celebrating the ADB’s golden anniversary is especially poignant. Anniversaries, likewise, call for a moment of reflection and evaluation. As the ADB turns another year, we take stock of what we can do better to serve our members better.
Much has been said about how we are entering the Asian Century, with the continent reclaiming its dominant role in the global economy. In 1990 Asia contributed only a little more than 20 percent in the world’s GDP growth. In 2014 Asia’s share shot up to around 40 percent, the biggest slice of the pie and far larger than the contributions of the United States and the European Union. Asia’s resurgence comes amid widespread uncertainty and volatility in a world still struggling with uneven recovery and divergent policy paths.
With these challenges, the opportunities for more meaningful partnerships with the ADB in the next 50 years are boundless. The ADB has already taken steps to expand its financing capacity by merging Ordinary Capital Resources and the Asian Development Fund in anticipation of scaled-up operations moving forward.
As economies become more mature and complex, however, the need for concessional financing takes a back seat to unfettered access to knowledge and expertise from institutions, like the ADB.
Thus, the ADB’s 50th anniversary may perhaps be the best time to consider revisiting its charter and completely redefining its role from being mainly a source of concessional financing—to a renewed, agile and dynamic institution able to assist members on their country-specific growth requirements, playing larger roles in institutional development, knowledge management and digitalization.
For example, we commend the ADB for pursuing development as a knowledge institution. We believe ADB-financed interventions for Developing Member Countries (DMCs) are best packaged with its knowledge products to ensure sustainable capacity development. In the long term, DMCs benefit the most from knowledge transfers, not from the financial assistance. But perhaps we can see more exponential results if the ADB can move from simply engaging country governments with their valued technical expertise to vastly democratizing its knowledge resources with the use of technology.
The presence of new multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the region can be taken as another opportunity for ADB to improve and collaborate. We strongly urge the Management team to continue pursuing product innovations and further collaboration with other MDBs to become more responsive as a development institution.
We are encouraged by Management’s proposed organizational reforms to ensure business continuity. Streamlined business operations, continually building on the expertise of staff, maximizing its use of the sector and thematic groups are all integral to making the Bank’s operations more efficient.
Before I close, let me also take a moment to express our deepest sympathy to the people of Fiji who experienced a devastating catastrophe in February—Tropical Cyclone Winston. This reminded me of Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan), which devastated the Philippines in 2013.
Catastrophes of this scale and frequency are proof that climate change is, indeed, the existential challenge many of our DMCs face. It pleases me to note then that the Bank has committed to double its annual climate change financing to $6 billion by 2020.
We encourage the Bank to continue working with the V20 (now V43), the group of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in coming up with viable risk pooling mechanisms, in raising funding for climate-change mitigation and adaptation, capacity building and in generating technical assistance for building a more resilient infrastructure and economy. Doing so will position the ADB to take a more proactive and holistic approach in this climate change initiatives.
I am sure I speak for the entire Vulnerable 20 Group of Finance Ministers when I say that we are counting on multilateral finance and knowledge institutions, like the ADB to join us in our fight for survival and shared prosperity.
Climate change is real and is intertwined with the issue of poverty. Together they are the defining challenge of our generation. I look forward to the next 50 years of the Bank at the forefront of the fight against this
twin challenges.
Thank you.