Pity the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It is trying to come up with a reason to exist for an Asian continent that already is achieving development and doesn’t need a Development Bank. Given all the success stories in today’s Asia, you’d think ADB could pat itself on the back for a job well done and then pack up and go home. But not so fast, says ADB, which is desperately trying to find new things to do with its 2,000 employees and $6 billion of annual lending.
To that end, ADB is working on a Long Term Strategic Framework 2020, a project best read as bureaucratic jargon for ADB’s promise to keep producing bureaucratic jargon through the year 2020. For help with the framework, ADB commissioned an Eminent Persons Group to tell it what to do with itself. The learned committee was chaired by Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, a body that has long distinguished itself by promoting all the bad ideas that stifle both trade and development. The end result was a report called Toward a New Asian Development Bank in a New Asia. The eminences have pointed out to ADB what should be obvious to anyone who reads The Wall Street Journal: ADB’s original raison d’etre of providing capital is obsolete in a capital-surplus region with a large excess of saving over investment.
He should have said it last year when he was invited by ADB
Related;
Distinguished Speakers Program
Are Aid Agencies improving? forthcoming, Economic Policy.
Interview with Easterly- Economic Policy
Event Coming Up-Columbia;
What Use is Aid? Monday, October 8, 2007. NEW LOCATION! Altschul Auditorium, 417 IAB. 8:00pm.Featuring William Easterly, Peter Singer, and Joseph Stiglitz.
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