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.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of US Affordable Care Act enrollees expired on Jan.1, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year. Democrats forced a 43-day US government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their political aspirations this year. US President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash. In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date. A US House of Representatives vote
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS