Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was on Saturday elected as Chair of the ADB’s Board of Governors and the country will host the 46th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in New Delhi next year.

“India is very happy to accept the chair,” Mukherjee said at the closing business session of the 45th annual meeting of the ADB board of governors.

Mukherjee said while India was the founding member of the ADB in 1966, its lending operations in India began two decades later.

“The 25 years of partnership has been an exciting and challenging journey,” he said, adding that he was “honoured”.

As a major multilateral lending organisation, the Manila-headquartered ADB has 67 members, of which 48 are from Asia. The US and Japan are the largest shareholders of the ban while India is the fifth largest.

“ADB’s three-year country operations business plan for India for 2012 - 2014 will provide lending assistance of USD 6.25 billion to support inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth,” Secretary ADB Robert Dawson told PTI.

The lending support will go to key areas like transport, energy, urban development, agriculture natural resource management, finance and education.

Inviting ADB members to the next annual meeting to be held in New Delhi, Mukherjee said the Philippines, host of the 45th conference, has set very high standards of hospitality and efficiency.

“Our hosts here in the Philippines have set very high standards. While we can safely promise you much warmer, dare I say slightly hotter, weather, we shall endeavour to match the Philippines standards of hospitality and efficiency”.

He said it is an honour for India to host the next annual meeting and chair the deliberations in “our race to the shared vision for the future, a world where the lives of hundreds of millions of poor people are transformed and there is freedom from poverty, disease, illiteracy, and gender inequality’”.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 7th May 2012