Tbilisi: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is waiting for Sri Lanka to complete its debt restructuring among the bilateral donors to explore ways and means to help Sri Lanka, Masatsugu Asakawa, President ADB said.
“ADB has been providing budget assistance to Sri Lanka and right now we are awaiting for the debt restructuring exercise to take place among the bilateral donors once it is complete the IMF will deliver the tranche under the ongoing programme where in the ADB also can join.”
“In terms of the debt restructuring exercise I think it is very important that every bilateral donor country and major private creditors join this exercise in a very transparent manner.”
Asakawa said once this process was complete the ADB would explore ways to help Sri Lanka further.
Meanwhile commenting on economy in Asia he said that although the outlook for Asia and the Pacific remains solid, over the past year, developing member countries (DMCs) have confronted the growing challenges of climate change, conflict, food insecurity, and increased debt.
“The climate crisis in particular threatens the region’s development. 2023 was the warmest year on record. Last year also saw disasters, many from natural hazards, affect about 44 million people in Asia and the Pacific,”, ADB President, Asakawa, told the Board of Governors Business Session, at the 57th Annual Meeting, in Georgia.
“At the last Annual Meeting, I said that ADB is actively evolving its mission to better support our developing member countries as they deal with these challenges.”
He said ADB’s major capital management reforms from the past year unlocked up to $100 billion in new lending capacity for the next decade.
“Similarly, our new operating model (NOM) has enabled us to deliver better, faster, and more tailored support to our developing member countries. More broadly, our performance last year demonstrated strong progress in areas that are key to achieving our priorities.”
Asakawa said ADB committed $23.6 billion in loans, grants, guarantees, equity investments, and technical assistance in 2023, a 15% increase from the previous year.
This included a record $9.8 billion in climate finance from ADB’s own resources, representing 41.5 % of our total commitments.
ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department committed $3.8 billion for non-sovereign operations, with a significant increase in lending for frontier economies.
ADB met its corporate financing targets for health, gender, and education, and we are on track to meet our ambition for food security financing.
“Asian Development Fund commitments reached $721 million in 2023 and we project this to increase to $865 million in 2024. ADB also introduced favorable concessional lending terms to small island developing members.
