Asian Development Bank at 50: The bank's annual meetings through the years

The Asian Development Bank will be holding the 49th edition of its annual meeting in Frankfurt, Germany on May 2-5 — an event that will also kick off the institution's 50th anniversary celebrations in providing development financing and solutions to the Asia-Pacific region.

The Manila-based institution has been the only multilateral development institution addressing the development needs of the region until the establishment of new institutions including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank over the past couple of years.

But with its rich history and experience in tackling development and humanitarian issues for the past half-century, ADB is poised to remain a major development player in the world’s most populous region. One way to look at the bank’s history and experience is through its annual meetings over the years and the themes it focused on. Bank sources confirm, however, that earlier annual meetings did not have specific themes, unlike those in recent years.