I\’m not sure I understand this.
OK, the Asian Development Bank:
an institution whose mission is to reduce poverty
Right, OK, good thing too.
Instead, these officials have decided to refocus ADB operations on three areas: inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration, with a heavy emphasis on private-sector development. The ADB is abandoning crucial public support for social development.
Right, so to beat poverty we need to create wealth and to do that we need to generate economic growth, which of course needs to be sustainable, and integration of economies is simply a code for further division of labour and the accompanying specialisation: the very things that create wealth.
Sounds like a pretty good plan to me.
So why are these people complaining?
I like MoveAnyMountain’s comment:
“If they had wanted an Asian Welfare Dependency Bank I am sure they would have called it such. “
I think there’s a great deal of evidence that the market cannot do everything, and that public sector spending, in areas such as health, infrastructure and education, is an important ingredient to development. There are areas where state spending is a complement, not a substitute, to the private sector.
The general trend in development lending seems to be toward direct budget support for governments, so on the basis of the description “abandoning … public support” it does look like a strange move. So much so that I’d guess it’s wrong.
If you think that the state ought to have no role in development policy*, well I find it hard to believe you have thought very hard about development, because there’s a good deal of theory and empirics that says otherwise.
* and I don’t call ‘getting out of the way’ a role.
Just delete the word ‘Instead’ from the second excerpt. Problem solved.
There is also a great deal of evidence that even a bare subsistence income level must be produced.
” handful of influential ADB bureaucrats with large salaries, secured pensions, comprehensive health insurance, subsidised housing and education for their children..”
Actually, that describes ALL of ADB’s professional staff and the writers could have further slanted their article by including “tax free” (except for the Filipino and American staff).
ADB tried to be a welfare administrator in the mid-90’s abandoning much of it’s prior role in infrastructure development and saw “poverty” increase by its measurements. MoveAnyMountin’s comments are spot-on.