During the Asian Development Bank’s recent annual meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, President Takehiko Nakao hinted at a major operational move that could potentially beef up the bank’s financial muscle without necessarily asking for more money from its shareholders.
Nakao plans to merge two of the bank’s financial instruments — the Asian Development Fund and the Ordinary Capital Resources — to optimize ADB’s resources and thus finance more development projects in Asia-Pacific by “doing more with less.”
“The rationale is to do more for poverty alleviation in the region, with less burden on the donors by introducing a mild market leverage that would not impact the financial strength [or] credit rating of ADB, nor the core mandate [or] strategy,” a senior bank official told Devex.