Muhith opposes proposal of ADB regional hub

Bangladesh is opposed to any regional hub of the Asian Development Bank as most country and sub-regional offices are faring well, said Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday.

"I'm not in favour of the regional hub because the country and the sub-regional offices of the ADB are doing well except in the Pacific," he told reporters at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Centre in Japan.

His comments came a day after India proposed the ADB set up a regional hub of the multilateral lender in New Delhi.

Muhith made the comments after his meeting with ADB President Takehiko Nakao on the sidelines of the 50th annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the bank. The four-day meeting ended yesterday. 

Nakao has assured Muhith that the dealings would be made directly from the headquarters, not from any kind of hub.

On Saturday, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley urged Nakao to set up the hub in the Indian capital so that a majority of the proposals could be quickly processed there.

Jaitley also proposed establishment of such hubs for other regions of the Asia and the Pacific.

Earlier, Nakao made it clear that no decision has been taken yet for opening any hub for South Asia, Central Asia or East Asia.

Some outposts of the Manila-based lender already have bigger staff strengths compared to other resident missions in 28 countries, Nakao said in his concluding media briefing.

He said that some of ADB's offices in Delhi, Islamabad, Jakarta and Hanoi have over 70 to 80 staff each.

Asked to compare the development assistance that Bangladesh receives from donor agencies and countries, Muhith said Japan is still the largest bilateral development partner of Bangladesh and is most likely to come up with a $1.3 billion in assistance this year.

Apart from the multilateral development agencies, China and India have committed a lot of assistance to Bangladesh in recent months, the minister said.

He said Bangladesh has expressed its willingness to join the BRICS Bank, which has been set up by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

During his meeting with the ADB president, Muhith told Nakao that the annual meeting was missing the ICT agenda to some extent.

“ICT will become the most important thing in the development relations in the future, and Bangladesh is in strong support of digitisation,” Muhith said.

“We're trying to move to a position where ICT will be governing many of the principles of the government."

Muhith said the country's dependence on the flow of external resources has come down to 1.2-1.4 percent of GDP from 8 percent in the early 1970s.