India Requests ADB to Focus on West and South Asia

India has urged the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to focus more on the West and South Asia regions after successful East Asia interventions by the multilateral lender and has said there is no case for increasing cost of its loan instruments as it has no capital deficiency, an official statement said on Sunday.

In his intervention on Saturday at the ADB's annual meeting in Manila, Economic Affairs Secretary S.C. Garg also made a strong case for ADB to adopt "country systems" for procurements and environmental safeguards and called for increasing lending for the private sector in developing countries, a Finance Ministry release said here.

Garg, who is an Alternate Governor on the ADB Board, the ADB "strategy should focus more on West Asia and South Asia as interventions in East Asia are already done fairly well," the statement said.

"He emphasized that the private sector operations of ADB as envisaged in the strategy should be enhanced and there should be more focus on equity participation.

"He also stated that there is absolutely no case for increase of cost of of various loan instruments as there is no capital deficiency in ADB," it said.

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"Garg also argued that there is a strong case for ADB to adopt Country Systems for procurements and environmental safeguards and called for concerted efforts towards increasing lending for the private sector in developing member countries," it added.

According to the statement, he also highlighted the need for taking into account the likely impact technical advancements such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, so that ADB can equip the member countries to reap maximum benefit.

The Indian delegation to the ADB also held bilateral meetings with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. (IANS)