ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (AsDB) - BANQUE ASIATIQUE DE DEVELOPPEMENT - BANCO ASIATICO DE DESARROLLO

Mr. Bong-Suh Lee, Vice President, Asian Development Bank (AsDB)

On behalf of the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), I would like to congratulate FAO on organizing and hosting this World Food Summit.

Let me briefly explain what the AsDB has been doing in the agricultural sector and, more specifically, on increasing the food production in the Asia Pacific region.

Increasing food production has been one of the major objectives of the AsDB's investment activities in the Asia Pacific region since the start of operations in 1968. By the end of 1995, lending for the agriculture sector amounted to about US$ 13 billion, or about one-fourth of total lending. Perhaps more significantly, the ADB has been a major source of concessional assistance for Asian agriculture. For example, during the 1980s we provided more than one-fifth of the total concessional Official Development Assistance for agriculture in the Asia Pacific region.

The bulk of AsDB's investments have provided irrigation infrastructure and modern farm inputs, directly supporting the Green Revolution. Our loans also supported the introduction of appropriate pricing policies, the construction of rural infrastructure, such as farm-to-market roads, and the provision of rural credit. Smaller investments were also made in the livestock and fisheries subsectors.

In addition to our loans, we have provided grant funds to strengthen agricultural sector institutions. Recently, in pursuing our rural developmental objectives, the AsDB's lending mix has sought to balance both economic growth and social development objectives, such as poverty alleviation, human resource development, improvement of women's status and protection of the environment. As a result, over the past few years there has been a relative decline in lending for traditional economic growth projects which was offset by an increase in loans for projects with social or environmental objectives.

The impact of this shift has been a drop in the share of AsDB lending for the agriculture sector from over 30 percent in the 1980s to about 10 percent in the early 1990s. Large irrigation and other infrastructure-oriented projects were dropped in favour of smaller projects that could more directly address the social objectives of development. It took some time to bring our agricultural activities more in line with the new operational focus but by 1995, the AsDB's lending for the agriculture sector rebounded to about US$ 900 million, or 16 percent of overall lending. We expect our lending for the agriculture sector to remain at about the same level to the end of the decade.

The AsDB would also continue to extend significant grant technical assistance funds to strengthen national agricultural subsector institutions, provide policy advice and do collaborative work with regional institutions. In this regard, I would like to mention AsDB's renewed emphasis on agriculture and natural resources research. Our current policy, which was approved last year, increased AsDB's previous commitment to a minimum of US$ 5 million each year to fund programmes of the CGIAR centres, a level of commitment which will be in effect until the next policy review.

In addition, the AsDB also promotes financial support for specialized research institutions outside the CGIAR system. The AsDB has always recognized the important contribution of agricultural institutions in their research activities which enhance crop yield rates and their application in the field, and we will continue to actively support their work for years to come.

The AsDB intends to remain, as we have in the past, a major participant in the development of agriculture in Asia and the Pacific.

On behalf of the AsDB, I would like to affirm our full support for the findings of the Summit as well as our commitment to work together with governments, funding agencies and international organizations to implement the Plan of Action.