Asian Development
Bank is misunderstood,
its leaders say

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Leaders of the Asian Development Bank say they're a shy, well-intentioned and misunderstood group with the goal of stamping out poverty, far from the picture painted by critics of an organization that promotes globalization and puts Third World nations into heavy debt.

"If you really travel in the countries where we work, you'll have a totally different perception," ADB secretary Bindu Lohani told a gathering of Honolulu City Council members yesterday.

The ADB's board of governors will be holding its annual conference at the Hawaii Convention Center from May 7 to 11.

The conference is expected to draw protesters from around the world. But a group known as ADBwatch has been criticizing local government leaders for spending too much money on security measures that aren't needed.

Local authorities are also warning that the anticipated protests will result in park and road closures and possibly other disruptions.

The purpose of the Manila-based bank, which has 60 member nations led by the United States and Japan, is to eliminate poverty in Asia, Lohani said. Opposition comes from those who feel they've done more harm than good.

Karti Sandilya, poverty reduction unit manager for the bank, said the ADB has different missions in the countries it goes into. "We need to see what makes people poor, what keeps them poor, and what we can do to help them escape the poverty," Sandilya said.

That could be upgrading health care centers in Laos, road construction in India or training small business owners in Indonesia, he said.

Lohani said the demonstrations held in opposition to last year's ADB conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand, were the first of their kind. The organization has its own inspection process to weed out improprieties in its projects, he said.

"We do recognize there are certain groups who have this mandate, (an) agenda of not liking international agencies, but the people we work with have a different story," he said.

Carolyn Hadfield, a member of ADBwatch, said the bank has had a history of failed projects. A proposal to dam the Mekong River to send power to an industrialized area of Thailand would displace hundreds of thousands from southern China to the Mekong Delta, she said.

The project is also raising the ire of environmentalists, she said, who believe fish and other wildlife would go extinct if the dam is built.

"That's why they can't meet in those countries," Hadfield said. "That's why they meet in a place where they're isolated and where there's enormous protection for them."