Source: Development Gateway
This evaluation assessed ADB’s support for the Nghi Son Cement Corporation (NSCC), ADB’s first private sector project in Viet Nam. In December 1996, the ADB’s Board of Directors approved a direct loan of $30 million and a loan of $26.5 million under its complementary financing scheme for NSCC. At the time of project construction, NSCC was the largest greenfield cement plant in the world. This project was rated successful. The report showed that the strong commitment of the sponsors and effective coordination of ADB’s public and private sector operations with local governments were needed to achieve development objectives.
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Source: The Centre for Policy Dialogue
The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), as part of its dialogue programme, organised a dialogue on New Strategies for International Assistance with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director, Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), USA on January 5th, 2000 at Hotel Sonargaon, Dhaka. Professor Rehman Sobhan, Chairman, CPD moderated the dialogue. The dialogue, attended by Dr. S.A. Malek, Political Advisor to the Honourable Prime Minister, Government of Bangladesh, Mr. Saifur Rahman, MP, former Minister of Finance, Government of Bangladesh and Dr. A. Moyeen Khan MP, former Minister of State for Planning, Government of Bangladesh, was also participated by a cross section of top level policy makers, politicians, academics, experts, business leaders and leaders of various civil society groups. (List of the participants is annexed). This dialogue report presents a summary of the keynote presentation made by Professor Sachs and briefly captures the main points of the interactive discussion and exchanges which followed Professor Sach's presentation.
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Source: Centre for Policy Dialogue
The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) organised a national dialogue titled “Bangladesh Development Forum 2004: Civil Society’s Perspectives†which was held on May 05, 2004 at the CIRDAP auditorium, Dhaka. The purpose of the dialogue was to create an opportunity for constructive engagement to discuss the context, agenda and possible outcomes of the Bangladesh Development Forum 2004 (BDF 2004), scheduled to be held during May 9-11, 2004. Furthermore, the dialogue was to create a platform for candid and open discussion on issues on the table, for major stakeholders including the civil society groups, the government and the development partners.
Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Executive Director, CPD, presented the keynote paper at the dialogue. Professor Rehman Sobhan, Chairman, CPD, presided over the dialogue. The Honarable Minister for Finance and Planning Mr M Saifur Rahman, MP was present at the dialogue as the Chief Guest. Mr Mushfiqur Rahman, MP, Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Finance and Mr Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Political Secretary to the Honarable Leader of the Opposition in the parliament were the Special Guests on the occasion.
Participants of the dialogue included leaders of the mainstream political parties, high level policymakers, representatives of international and bilateral development agencies, leading development activists, leaders of the trade bodies, academics, and media personalities. The list of participants is attached in Annex 1.
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Author: Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), Kathmandu
Source: South Asia Network of Economic Research Institute (SANEI)
In support of poverty alleviation programme, donors have been providing a substantial amount of external assistance to Nepal over the years. The per-capita foreign aid disbursement reached 18 US dollar in 1999 with loan assistance exceeding over grant. The country’s total outstanding foreign loan hovered around 49 percent of GDP as of 1999. With the ballooning total foreign debt, the per-capital debt burden on Nepalis has also surged considerably in recent years. It has touched Rs.7,876, which is almost 50 percent of the estimated per-capita income. The article explains that despite the inflow of huge foreign aid, poverty showed no sign of improvement. Foreign aid has either failed to address the poverty issue or it has not yet reached the intended beneficiaries.
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Author: Jubilee South, Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) and Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD)
Nine years after the water distribution function of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) was auctioned off to private corporations, the Philippine government and Metro Manila’s water concessionaires have nothing to show but skyrocketing rates, unmet service obligations and heavier debt burdens. The article explains how the supposed model for private sector participation (PSP) or public-private partnership (PPP) in the global water industry has become a classic example of a water crisis solution that proves to be worse than the problem it purports to address.
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Author: Jubilee South - Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JS-APMDD)
People’s access to their most precious resource – freshwater – is today at greater risk than ever before from aggressive attempts to profit massively from this life-giving resource. Privatization – the transfer of some or all of the assets or operations of public water systems into private hands – is unfolding at an alarmingly accelerated pace in the Asia Pacific region, led by such international financial institutions as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, working in collusion with client governments and
global water corporations.
The impacts and outcomes of handing over control, distribution and management of water resources to private entities already debunk many of the claims of privatization proponents. Continuously increasing costs of water and water services are Water Privatization in the Asia Pacific Region actually resulting in erosion of people’s access, especially for households who lack the capacity to pay. The premium placed on profitability has also led to deterioration of services in areas considered not viable enough. This has proven fatal in countries like the Philippines, with the outbreak of cholera and other diseases caused by dirty water. Consumers are held hostage by companies that have made their pledges of improving infrastructure contingent on the approval of tariff hikes. In several cases, even the continuous rise in water tariffs has not led to quality water services by private water firms. Marginalized and vulnerable groups, particularly women, are among those hit hardest because of the longer labor hours needed to source water that their families can afford.
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Author: Asian Development Bank
Source: Global Development Network
This paper takes a fresh look, from a macro perspective, at the issue of aid effectiveness. An important point of departure for this study is that it adopts poverty reduction, as contrasted from economic growth, as the metric for measuring aid effectiveness. In conducting the empirical investigation, the paper experiments with a number of different regression equations and uses a new panel dataset on poverty. It shows that aid and aid-squared both have significant coefficients but with different signs (positive for aid and negative for aid-squared). This result suggests that aid is effective when it is relatively moderate but becomes ineffective when the size of aid exceeds the critical value defined by the absorptive capacity. Our results further suggest that while the macro policy environment and the quality of governance have a significant bearing on poverty reduction, aid effectiveness is not critically contingent on them. Aid has on average been effective, our regression results confirm, under a whole variety of circumstances—in terms of policy environments and quality of governance—in a wide diversity of developing countries. It also points to the limited usefulness of using aggregative index of (macroeconomic) policy and governance for policy insights. To derive useful policy insights, one needs to look beyond these aggregates. Hopefully, the present paper, which makes an exploratory first attempt in directly linking poverty reduction (rather than growth) to aid, controlling for a number of macroeconomic policy variables and governance, would inspire further future research efforts.
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Source: Centre for Policy Dialogue - Bangladesh
The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) organised a dialogue titled “Aid and policy reforms in Bangladesh†on December 7, 2004 at BRAC auditorium. Agriculture Minister Mr M K Anwar, MP was present at the dialogue as the Chief Guest. Dr Mirza Azizul Islam, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Mr M Syeduzzaman, former Finance Minister, presented two keynote papers. Ms Christine Wallich, Country Director of the World Bank, and Dr Masihur Rahman, former Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary, spoke as designated discussants. Professor Rehman Sobhan, Chairman of the CPD, chaired the dialogue.
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Annotated Bibliography for Asia
Debapriya Bhattacharya, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh
Asia Literature Review
Debapriya Bhattacharya, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh
Feedback on Literature Reviews
Comments on the Asia Literature Review
Priyanthi Fernanco, Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), Sri Lanka
Comments on the Asia Literature Review
Antonio Tujan, IBON Foundation Inc, Philippines
Literature reviews were done as part of the Southern Voices Project.
