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MANILA, Dec 1: The Asian Development Bank (ADB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) are to hold a regional conference on poverty reduction in Asia in Hanoi from December 4-6, it was announced here on Saturday.
The conference will review poverty reduction strategies in the Asia-Pacific region, identify obstacles in designing such strategies and look into lessons to be learned from such cases, the ADB said in a statement from its headquarters in Manila.
Similar regional conferences will be held in Bolivia and Hungary. An earlier conference was already held in Senegal in September.
The input from the conferences will be used in an international conference on poverty reduction strategies to be held in Washington from January 14 to 17, sponsored by the IMF and the World Bank, the ADB added.
LOAN FOR INDONESIA: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced on Saturday that it had approved a $100 million loan to Indonesia for an education project intended to help some 1.26 million poor children.
The loan will support the continued decentralization of basic education management in Indonesia and will be implemented by local governments, communities and schools in rural districts in Nusa Tenggara Barat province, poor districts in Bali and impoverished communities in Jakarta, the ADB said.
The ADB loan will have a term of 32 years including a grace period of eight years. It will have an interest rate of one per cent per year during the grace period and 1.5 per cent thereafter.—AFP
