Fighting poverty, stabilizing Asia's currencies, nurturing its financial markets and assessing China's rising economic clout are some issues expected to top the agenda at the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) ministers' meeting this weekend.
Beginning today, finance officials from more than 60 countries are spending three days at the bank's annual meeting of governors on South Korea's Jeju resort island.
The topics are as broad as Asia is diverse.
Though the region Japan and export powerhouse China, about 720 million Asians -- nearly two-thirds of the world's poor -- still live hand-to-mouth on less than US$1 a day.
That means cutting poverty and hunger are as important as nurturing financial markets and keeping currency speculators at bay for countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and Pacific island nations like Kiribati.
The bank said Monday that halving poverty by 2015 -- a goal at the 2002 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa -- would rank atop the agenda.
With the bank forecasting 6.8 percent growth in developing Asian nations this year, ministers are expected to grapple with the tricky task of engineering an expansion without making poverty worse.
Ways to avoid the pitfalls of a possible slowdown in China, terrorism and disease outbreaks -- such as SARS and bird flu -- are also expected to come up.
Ahead of the meeting, officials focused on how to stabilize financial markets and currencies.
Yesterday, South Korea's Finance and Economy Minister Lee Hun-jai said officials were near agreement on a plan to boost foreign currency reserves, currency policy coordination and market monitoring. Such steps have been concerns since massive capital flight from Asia triggered a financial crisis in the late 1990s.
"The vice ministers of South Korea, China and Japan are ... putting the final touches on an agreement," Lee said.
ADB President Tadao Chino said ministers were debating ways to integrate bond markets. This would add to regional programs aimed at sorting out Asia's problems without relying on the World Bank and other international lenders.
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