Projects help those who are poorest

By Shoji Nishimoto

In Indonesia, 18-year-old Aminah used to live on the streets of Yogyakarta, singing or selling newspapers to earn money and wasting her earnings on cheap alcohol and glue for sniffing. Her future seemed bleak.

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Highlights of ADB meeting on O'ahu What: 34th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank. The Manila-based bank, formed in 1966, is owned by 59 member countries, mostly from Asia and the Pacific. When: May 7-11, Hawai'i Convention Center Who: 600 delegates from member nations, led by ministers of finance or central bank governors. 1,500 international and local guests representing major banks and businesses throughout the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and North America. 400 representatives of international, national and local media. How Hawai'i businesses, residents can participate: Global Pavilion exhibits. Exhibit space for businesses is available for as little as $1,000. Contact Lorinda Wong-Lau, Hawai'i Tourism Authority (973-2255). Seminars. Limited public seating is available for conference-related seminars on such topics as urban environmental problems, tourism's role in reducing poverty and doing business in Asia. Information online: adb2001.org

Shelters like Ghifari are turning around the lives of girls who make up 20 percent of Indonesia's estimated 170,000 street children, a figure that has escalated since the Asian financial crisis. The shelters help these girls, often victims of sexual abuse and prostitution, leave the aimless, hazardous existence of the street and return to safer, more productive and fulfilling lives.

In the Philippines, some families living in slums alongside a railway track or beside a mountain of garbage are being relocated to new homes where they will receive safe water and sanitation facilities as well as access to money to learn new skills or to start small businesses.

In Papua New Guinea, squatters in several urban areas will be provided with low-cost, ventilated pit latrines to reduce the high rates of diarrhea and other waterborne intestinal diseases.

Money for these recently-approved projects, which are targeted at specific groups of poor people, come from a new $90 million Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, financed by the Japanese government and administered by the Asian Development Bank.

ADB represents a partnership of 59 developed and developing countries committed to bringing capital and expertise to Asia and the Pacific to improve the lives of 900 million people who live on a $1 a day or less.

The Japan Fund offers the opportunity to pilot test innovative schemes that may lead to much larger loan projects in the future. As such, it is an important instrument in ADB's stepped-up drive to halve the proportion of very poor people in Asia and the Pacific by 2015. ADB is allocating 40 percent of its annual lending — expected to total about $6 billion in this year — to direct poverty interventions.

Such interventions are only part of ADB's poverty-reduction strategy, adopted in 1999. The strategy rests on the three pro-poor pillars of sustainable economic growth, social development and good governance.

Economic growth is a powerful tool for reducing poverty by generating employment and income. Examples of ADB supported pro-poor growth programs include rural electrification programs in Bangladesh and Bhutan. In areas where four out of five people lack power, electricity transforms lives. Irrigation pumps raise crops and incomes, men and women operate electric equipment for fishpond and livestock-rearing schemes and children switch on lights when they do their homework in the evenings.

A second key pillar of ADB's poverty reduction strategy is social development. One such example is ADB's effort to bring education to girls in Pakistan, a country where more than 90 percent of females are illiterate. Education brings multiple benefits. Better-educated women are more empowered, they contribute more to the national economy, and they give children better care and opportunities.

Another pillar of ADB's poverty reduction drive is good governance. The poor suffer most from weak governance, which affects the delivery of public services such as basic health care. Good governance ensures the transparent use of public funds, promotes effective delivery of public services and helps to establish the rule of law, especially the enforcement of contractual and property rights.

The private sector, as the engine for economic activity in generating new business and jobs, is an essential partner in the fight against poverty. ADB actively promotes an enabling environment for the private sector. One way of encouraging business is to form public sector-private sector partnerships. For example, ADB coordinated a deal between the Philippines government and a private firm to provide drinking water to nearly 68,000 low-income families in metropolitan Manila.

It is also noteworthy that for those bypassed by growth — the most vulnerable groups, including women, children, the elderly, and victims of natural disasters — ADB is preparing a strategic framework for social protection.

The region faces a daunting task and cooperation is essential between governments, international agencies, civil society and the private sector to reconcile agendas and achieve a common vision of eradicating poverty.

Shoji Nishimoto is director of ADB's Strategy and Policy Department.