Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is scheduled to attend the 44th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) being held in Hanoi at a time when high inflation is threatening to push millions of people in the Asia-Pacific region to extreme poverty.
Understandably, the prime focus of deliberations at the four-day ADB meeting starting May 3 will be on ways and means of tackling the runaway increase in global food and oil prices with special reference to the multilateral lending agency's recent report on how the resurgence in food and oil prices and consequent high inflation are impacting the economies of developing Asia and driving millions of rural and urban households to below poverty line.
Besides Mr. Mukherjee, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and her Japanese counterpart Yoshihiko Noda are also slated to participate in the deliberations with ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) Deputy Managing Director Naoyuki Shinohara during the four-day meeting of the board of governors of the Manila-based multilateral institution.
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Alongside, the meeting will assess the immediate and long-term hurdles that need to be overcome in discussions with Ministers and senior government officials, business leaders, fellow international financial institutions, and civil society representatives.
Apart from bilateral meetings with his counterparts from other countries, Mr. Mukherjee is also scheduled to participate in a Governor's seminar on the initial findings of a study titled ‘Asia 2050: Pursuit of growth, sustainability and well being.' The seminar will focus on some of the key issues such as sustaining rapid growth, demographic challenges and food security and what the region must do to secure sustainable growth over the next four decades.
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Climate change
Some of the other issues to be taken up for discussion are environmental degradation and climate change, growing and ageing populations, and global economic rebalancing which are among the numerous challenges for Asia as it seeks to cement the foundations for a prosperous future.
The Asia-Pacific region now accounts for about a quarter of global economic output but this, according to ADB, could soar to around 50 per cent by 2050. By then, the region will account for over half the world's population, increasingly flooding into the region's cities, using an ever-larger portion of the world's finite resources, and generate a bigger carbon footprint.