ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK PRESIDENT SPEAKS AT ASIA PACIFIC BUSINESS SYMPOSIUMS

The Asia Pacific Business Symposium is being held at Hawaii for the APEC leader’s week. Trade, foreign and finance ministers are expected to avail themselves for the meeting which is to be held, the following day. The president of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda is also expected to be among the attendees to speak at the event. Kuroda has been in the finance sector for long and has even held great positions such as the vice minister finance at International Monetary Fund (IMF). Before he became the ADB’s president, he was teaching at Hitotsubashi University and was also an economic advisor. Having finished his first 5-years term as the Bank’s president since 2006, great progress has been noted on the developing Asia. As he’s about to take on the next 5-years term, there’s a lot of promise on the continued development of Asian countries.

 Asian Development Bank president is honored to be attending the business symposium sponsored by East-West Centre (EWC) and Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) alongside APEC. During his speech, President Haruhiko touches on the challenges and benefits, developing Asia has been experiencing and what needs to be done to better themselves. For starters, he speaks of how the year has been economically challenging and goes on to speak about developing Asia’s GDP. He expresses his concern on Asia’s contribution to the global GDP as well as to the global economic growth. The main goal of developing Asia is to build, sustain strengthen and promote economic expansion. Needless say, the economic prospects of the region will be achieved, if and only if, their GDP increases. This can only happen if the Asian Pacific country members put their efforts in providing domestic regional demands and accomplishing their goals on it.

 Another pressing issue was inflation which remains to be a policy priority for most of the nation’s worldwide. Despite the challenges caused by inflation such as low price commodity, the Central Banks have been doing their best to maintain low levels of inflation and weakening outlooks. Nonetheless, inflation has been largely under control and countries can’t complain as much. President Kuroda encourages the Asian Pacific region to overlook their old strategies and not neglect them since they proved to be beneficial. The Asian Pacific region also needs to concentrate on private consumption, investments and infrastructure. Infrastructure itself needs trillions of dollars to be developed which will in turn provide jobs for the people hence cutting down on poverty. In addition to that, markets will be brought closer to the people and they can boost their SME’s and even create new markets.

 Asian Workers depend wholesomely on SME’s for daily living therefore, this will have great positive impact on the people if all goes as planned. Other sectors that need to be looked into are the finance industry, industrial devolution, climatic change and technology. According to President Haruhiko, climatic change needs to be carefully taken under control as it can have a toil on the developing Asia’s economic growth. More so, climatic volatility has led to higher sea levels and temperatures. From the point of view, Asia Pacific nations – China, India, Philippines, Indonesia and the rest of the nations need to join their efforts so as to boost their growth and development. The Asia Pacific business symposium is providing a great platform for the region to bring forward their challenges, seek advice and insights on how to improve themselves and much more.