All set for ADB meet

Wednesday May 3 2006

HYDERABAD: All arrangements have been put in place for the prestigious 39th annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) beginning here on May 4.

This is the second time India is hosting the three-day event, the last being in New Delhi in 1990. Some 2,500 delegates from 65 countries, including 150 representatives from 80 civil society organisations (CSOs), are attending the meeting.

The organisers have developed a staff guide to improve consultations with, and participation by, stakeholders in ADB operations, which will be released on Thursday.

ADB works closely with CSOs to promote economic growth that is pro-poor, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable and has undertaken several initiatives that have helped strengthen its growing links with CSOs.

Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy held a meeting with senior officials and discussed the PowerPoint presentation to be made in the Advantage India seminar during the ADB meeting on the progress made by the State Government in various fields. On Wednesday, he will review the arrangements being made for the ADB meeting.

Over 2,000 rooms in nearly three dozen star hotels, and in institutional and corporate guesthouses, have already been booked and hundreds of cars hired to ferry delegates from various destinations.

With the People’s Forum Against ADB (PFAADB) gearing itself to hold protests and counter meetings, security has been beefed up in and around the Hyderabad International Convention Centre. Barricades were erected at main places and vehicular traffic would be regulated for a couple of hours every day to facilitate easy passage for the delegates’ vehicles.

However, activists of the PFAADB and Greenpeace took officials by suprise, entering Hitex, the venue of the meeting, and distributed pamphlets criticising the bank’s role. ADB had become the custodian of private investment, and promoter and protector of corporate interests and profits, they said.

The pamphlets also demanded that the ADB decide whether it should continue to fund climate change or change course and deliver solutions that would protect and foster Asia’s most vulnerable communities.