April 13, 2011
Statement by Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda
Mr. Haruhiko Kuroda, the President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), expressed his intention today to continue serving as the president in the next term, following the current term ending November 23, 2011.
Since he assumed the presidency in February 2005, Mr. Kuroda, while undertaking thorough reforms on various aspects of operations and management of the ADB, has placed poverty reduction as the ADB's overarching mission and formulated the Bank's long-term strategy (The Strategy 2020) to accomplish the mission. With a view to enabling the ADB to proceed further toward the goal, Mr. Kuroda led the Bank successfully to gain support of the member countries for the 200 percent General Capital Increase, a capital increase for the first time in 15 years, which was agreed upon in April 2009. In addition, Mr. Kuroda actively planned and implemented assistances for fragile countries, notably Afghanistan, and organized ADB's swift and effective assistances in the aftermath of the recent global financial and economic crisis, thereby demonstrating his superb leadership in strengthening the ADB's support for growth and poverty reduction in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Asia-Pacific region took a lead in a recovery process from the recent global crisis. However, with the two-thirds of the world's poor population left in the area, substantial challenges still remain to be tackled, including improvement in infrastructures for mobilizing private investment and promotion of further regional integration through facilitating finance and trade, in order to lead the region further to a path of sustainable growth and poverty reduction.
For the ADB to continue tackling these challenges effectively and assisting development, with more strengths, of the Asia-Pacific countries with which Japan will grow hand in hand, I would like to strongly support Mr. Kuroda's term as the President of the ADB to be extended by one more, in light of Mr. Kuroda's brilliant achievements.