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KYOTO, Japan : The Asian Development Bank won support on Sunday for its plans for an overhaul but members countries also urged the lender not to forget its core goal of poverty reduction.
ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda told the bank's 67 members that as Asia transforms so too must its development bank.
He said Asia now "has new challenges to tackle - no longer arising from pervasive poverty, but instead from economic success."
"A dramatically transformed Asia will also require an equally transformed development partner in the ADB," he told the opening of the governors' annual meeting in Kyoto, Japan.
The ADB should play a greater role in regional integration, making better use of Asia's huge savings, and fostering knowledge creation, Kuroda added.
ADB governors generally agreed the bank needs to adapt as much of developing Asia heads towards middle income status.
"We applaud ADB's efforts to undertake operational and institutional reforms," said Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqing.
But there were differences on how to reform, with some nations such as Britain pushing for the bank to play a greater role in promoting efforts to reduce greenhouse gases while others said it should stick to its original goal.
The idea of the ADB shifting its focus away from poverty reduction efforts has rattled some of the region's poorer countries which fear that they will miss out on Asia's impressive economic growth.
Afghanistan and other poor nations have urged the ADB not to forget its founding objectives.
"Over the coming decades, (the) ADB must not lose sight of its development focus, its commitment to improving the region's infrastructure, and to supporting activities that fast-track poverty reduction," said Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.
The four-decade-old ADB is looking for a new role to ensure it is not forced to close its doors by the end of the next decade, by which time it expects that most of the region's countries will have escaped widespread poverty.
But the United States, one of the ADB's top shareholders, suggested the lender should be ready to wind down when its job is done, rejecting a proposal for the ADB to manage some of the region's vast foreign exchange reforms.
"One way or another, ADB will become a different institution from the one that has served (Asia) so well in its first 40 years," said the top US delegate Kenneth Peel.
But he added: "The bank does not need to compete with private venture capital funds; it does not need to become a money manager for central banks and it does not need to become a mini-IMF.
"When the private sector can take over from its core missions... the bank should step aside and declare victory," he added.
France's acting governor, Ramon Fernandez, said the ADB "should not forget its core mandate."
The ADB's primary role when it was established in 1966 was to borrow money from the capital markets to lend to developing Asian economies that might struggle to raise affordable funds on their own.
But now the region is awash with capital and countries also need less borrowing to fight absolute poverty.
So the ADB is aiming to spend more money on building telecommunications networks, new roads and other infrastructure, and on clean energy projects to try to reduce rising greenhouse gas emissions.
"Projects such as road networks and information and telecommunications are vital, not only to national economic growth but also to regional and sub-regional development," the Chinese finance minister said. - AFP/de
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