ADB’s capital reforms to unlock $100bn for Asia
Expands annual new commitments capacity 40% to more than $36 bn, an increase of approximately $10 bn
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These important reforms will significantly expand ADB’s ability to support a broad range of critical development efforts across Asia and the Pacific, including greater concessional resources for our vulnerable members - Masatsugu Asakawa, President, ADB
Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Friday approved capital management reforms that unlock $100 billion in funds over the next 10 years to support Asia and the Pacific region with resources to manage a complex set of overlapping crises and climate change challenges.
The reforms were introduced through an update of ADB’s Capital Adequacy Framework (CAF). They expanded the bank’s annual new commitments capacity to more than $36 billion, an increase of approximately $10 billion, or about 40 per cent.
“The ADB approved capital management reforms that unlock $100 billion in new funding capacity over the next decade to address the region’s overlapping, simultaneous crises,” ADB said in a statement. The updated CAF is the latest of several initiatives by ADB to increase its lending capacity.
ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said these important reforms will significantly expand ADB’s ability to support a broad range of critical development efforts across Asia and the Pacific, including greater concessional resources for our vulnerable members.
“These resources will help the region manage a complex set of overlapping crises, address gender inequality, and provide for basic needs in the context of the existential challenge of climate change. This extra lending power will be extended and leveraged further by renewed efforts to mobilise private and domestic capital and maximize the impact of our work,” Asakawa said.
The ADB statement further said that the economies must also mobilise more tax revenue, modernise tax authorities through digitalisation, and cooperate to ensure a fair and well-functioning international tax system. Domestic resource mobilisation is vital in the effort to address debt sustainability and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, it added.
Asia and the Pacific’s poor and vulnerable are acutely exposed to escalating and interconnected crises that jeopardise their health, educational outcomes, and livelihoods. An estimated 155 million people, or 3.9 per cent of the region’s population, lived in extreme poverty in 2022 and many, in particular women, face a cost-of-living crisis that has made food and other essential commodities and services unaffordable, according to ADB.
