The four-day 51st annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Board of Governors was officially launched on May 5th, 2018 with the theme of “Linking People and Economies for Inclusive Development” in Manila, the Philippines. The Vietnamese delegation was headed by Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu of the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV).
At the Opening Session of the Board of Governors Meeting, the member countries agreed to continue to closely coordinate and link the people and the economies in order to build a sustainable Asia-Pacific region. The ADB will focus on assisting the member countries to tackle remaining poverty and increasing inequalities, develop infrastructure, improve healthcare and education quality, create jobs, and promote information technology applications, develop the private sector and build up the resilience to climate change… The ADB continues to strengthen regional cooperation such as building transportation networks and reducing logistics costs, energy connectivity, education, healthcare, tourism and financial stability. The ADB pledged to vigorously continue to reform its organizational structure and working methods to provide the member countries with effective support resources towards building a sustainable regional development. In addition, the ADB will work closely with other international organizations and private banks to increase resources and effectively address the challenges of the region.
At a meeting with Mr. Stephen P. Groff – Vice President of the ADB, Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu expressed the SBV’s support for the ADB's priorities in the Sustainable Development Strategy 2030. At the same time, the Deputy Governor highly appreciated the ADB's resources, technical assistance and policy advice provided to Vietnam, and affirmed that the Government of Vietnam is determined to make effective use of these important resources. The SBV Deputy Governor informed the ADB that the Government is implementing drastic measures to timely negotiate and receive 613 million USD of the ADF funding before graduating from this Fund on January 1st, 2019.
The ADB Vice President highly appreciated the efforts and positive results that the Government of Vietnam has achieved, such as: macroeconomic stability, maintaining high GDP growth, low inflation, particularly the effective implementation of the monetary policy, exchange rate stabilization, increasing foreign exchange reserves, restructuring the banking system and dealing with bad debts. The ADB also pledged to further strengthen its cooperation with Vietnam and believes the Government of Vietnam will achieve its stated socio-economic development goals.
The SBV Deputy Governor and the ADB Vice President agreed to work closely to implement the co-operation guidelines issued during the ADB President's visit to Vietnam as part of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Conference in late March 2018. In particular, the SBV Deputy Governor requested the ADB to officially announce the postponement of Vietnam’s fast repayment of the ADF loans after its graduation. The ADB Vice President re-confirmed that the ADB President and the ADB Board of Directors have expressed their support in postponing Vietnam’s ADF loan repayment and will direct the relevant departments to officially inform Vietnam on this matter at an early time.
On the sidelines of the ADB Annual Meeting, between May 2 to 4, 2018, the SBV Delegation also participated in a series of meetings within the framework of monetary and financial cooperation for ASEAN+3 countries.
VA