Skills training, civic engagement and youth forums will help young people become active players in society’s shared efforts to grow and improve.

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are working together to encourage the free flow of skilled labor within their countries. 

To understand fragility and resilience in Papua New Guinea, look to history and the people living in the country’s most vulnerable areas.

Here’s why the perception that skilled migration damages the source country is wrong.

The global value chains that help drive Asia’s export-driven economic miracle have widespread development impacts. We need to understand them better to maximize the benefits.

Making it easier for workers to move between countries is key to liberalizing the trade in services and unleashing the benefits it will produce across national and regional economies.

Climate-smart and resource-saving farming technologies could be one way to address hunger in Asia.

Infrastructure has a critical role in narrowing gender gaps and accelerating the advancement of women and girls. If women are given a say in infrastructure design and investment, projects can become more effective enablers of their growth.

The Asia and Pacific region is aging rapidly, and that is affecting the region’s workforce, but increased longevity is adding an unexpected element to the picture

Local officials can now find information from all sectors, such as health, education, women’s empowerment, child protection, and human rights and law, to help them address child and teen marriage in their area.

Southeast Asian economies are starting to feel the pinch of trade tensions, recession fears and other global trends.

The poor and middle class are struggling to find affordable housing across the region, but there are some basic steps cities can take to improve the situation.

Work done within the home, including caring for children, is extremely important to society but undervalued and poorly tracked. 

With no single cause, and no magic solution, the congestion of Asia’s cities requires government resolve and know-how to fix.

Past financial crises have demonstrated how adequate financial safety net arrangements—globally, regionally, and nationally—are vital to safeguarding financial stability.

The ‘app economy’ provides potential risks and benefits for developing countries. The right policies are needed to bring out the best in these emerging economic trends.

Despite variations across countries on policy mix and timing, a pragmatic focus on sustained growth, poverty reduction, and inclusiveness characterize Asia’s economic rise 

Asia and the Pacific is not where it needs to be to meet the Sustainable Development Goals but there remains a decade to make up for lost time.

Asian cities act as engines of economic growth, providing jobs, expertise, and the sharing of resources. But in some cases, these powerful engines are sputtering due to insufficient infrastructure, inadequate planning, and poor governance.

Solar power is helping Asia get electricity to people, particularly in rural and remote areas, but it has fallen behind in its use as a clean energy cooking source.

Girls and women today have far more opportunities and role models than their mothers and grandmothers, but there is much more to be done.

A high level of external debt is linked with decreased economic growth but there are policy options that can help economies keep growing.

Asia’s economies have generally maintained sound macroeconomic policies that can help the region withstand this latest challenge and emerge even stronger.

The Asia Pacific region is standing together to cooperate regionally to address the transnational threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bank-held nonperforming loans in some Asian economies have risen in recent years. Policy makers should address this growing risk now.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to strengthen programs and policies affecting older persons both in times of crisis and afterward.

For many of Indonesia’s urban poor who work in the informal sector, social distancing is nearly impossible if they want to maintain their income. Two key policies can help.

The pandemic provides an opportunity for regional financial cooperation on reforms to make Asian banks more resilient to crises.

The Asia-Pacific region has the expertise and resources to take a leadership role in not only developing a COVID-19 vaccine but distributing it to those who need it most.

Bold action is required by policymakers and central bankers to keep the region’s economies afloat and contain the pandemic.

Countries can minimize the economic risk of epidemics by investing in the tools needed to predict disease emergence.

A forward-looking, regional approach is needed for countries in Central Asia to respond to the pandemic and prepare for future public health threats.

To reduce air pollution, national and city government policy makers, their development partners, academe, and the private sector need to work with young people. 

Islamabad : Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines have the most cases of COVID-19 and related deaths in the Asia Pacific region.The COVID-19 situation of Asia Pacific was highlighted in the Second COVID-19 Situation Report Asia Pacific released by United Nations Population...

To better understand how ADB’s developing members are weathering the COVID-19 crisis, the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department launched the ADB COVID-19 Policy Database.

Grant agreements outline the terms of an agreement for a grant. This document dated 7 May 2020 is provided for the ADB project 54229-001 in Fiji.

ADB Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) 2020 is going virtual and will be held during the week of 15-19 June 2020.

ADB invites papers for the Asian Development Conference 2020 to be held 16-17 July 2020 in Seoul, Korea.

The Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors is an opportunity to provide guidance on ADB administrative, financial, and operational directions. The meetings provide opportunities for member governments to interact with ADB staff, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), media, and representatives of observer countries, international organizations, academe and the private sector. ADB’s annual meetings have become a premier forum for the discussion of economic and social development issues in Asia and the Pacific.

WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday accused China and Russia of stepping up cooperation to spread false narratives over the coronavirus pandemic, saying Beijing was increasingly adopting techniques honed by Moscow.

“Even before the Covid-19 crisis we assessed a certain level of coordination between Russia and the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) in the realm of propaganda,” said Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which tracks foreign propaganda.

“But with this pandemic the cooperation has accelerated rapidly,” she told reporters.

“We see this convergence as a result of what we consider to be pragmatism between the two actors who want to shape public understanding of the Covid pandemic for their own purposes,” she said.

The Global Engagement Center earlier said that thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic, including charging that the virus first detected last year in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan was created by the United States.

China outraged the United States when a foreign ministry spokesman tweeted a conspiracy that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan, but the two countries reached an informal rhetorical truce in late March after telephone talks between President Donald Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping.

Tensions have again soared as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushes the theory that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory, even though both the World Health Organisation and the US government’s top epidemiologist say there is no evidence of this.

According to the Global Engagement Centre, China has again intensified its online campaign to defend its handling of the pandemic, which has killed some 270,000 people worldwide, and criticise the United States.

“Beijing is adapting in real time and increasingly using techniques that have long been employed by Moscow,” Gabrielle said.

China has increasingly used bot networks to amplify its message, Gabrielle said.

She said that official Chinese diplomatic accounts suddenly witnessed a surge in late March, going from adding around 30 new followers daily to more than 720, often from freshly created accounts.

She said that China was first observed using such online methods to “sow political discord” in its autonomous territory of Hong Kong, which has witnessed major pro-democracy demonstrations.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2020

The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation.

ADB today approved $1.5 billion in financing to support the Government of Indonesia’s efforts to alleviate the impact of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on public health, livelihoods, and the economy.

Tunisia said it inspected a Turkish plane headed for Libya with medical aid that landed at an airport near the border.

The government of Indonesia wanted to improve land and water management in the Citarum River Basin, and requested assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to develop a long-term integrated water resources management (IWRM) investment program as part of its strategic road map. In December 2008, ADB approved a multitranche financing facility (MFF) for the Integrated Citarum Water Resources Management Investment Program to support the implementation of the IWRM road map in the basin. A periodic financing request was formulated to implement priority activities from the road map.

The Roundtable on Financing Water, to be held on 26–28 November 2019 in Manila, Philippines, is jointly organized by OECD and ADB. This is the fifth meeting of the roundtable series and focuses on the Asia and Pacific region.

This report presents nine case studies on poverty reduction projects financed by ADB in Mongolia, Nepal, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, and Viet Nam.

As Asia rapidly urbanizes, providing water and sanitation services has become problematic.

This publication features projects promoting gender mainstreaming in the energy, transport, water supply and sanitation, and irrigation subsectors in Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The COVID-19 outbreak is hurting developing Asia's economies. Growth will slow sharply, and the outlook is very uncertain.

Regional economic growth in developing Asia will decline sharply to 2.2% in 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, before recovering in 2021, according to the Asian Development Outlook 2020.