ISLAMABAD, March 27: A special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will be held in Manila on April 25 to discuss and approve new country strategy for Pakistan to offer 2.4 billion dollars for next three years.

“We have finalized our new country strategy for 2003-2005 and we are hopeful that the ADB Board will approve it in order to provide 2.4 billion dollars to Pakistan,” said a senior official in the local ADB office.

Dr Naveed Hamid told Dawn here on Wednesday that an important programme mission of the ADB was in Islamabad recently which discussed the issue of increasing funding for Pakistan with all the provinces and federal authorities. Later, he said, the mission held a wrap-up meeting and finalized the new strategy for Pakistan.

He said a number of new development projects and programmes will be covered under the new three-year programme.

The bank has already approved the $1 billion funding for calendar year 2002 for various development projects.

He said another important mission of the ADB will be visiting Pakistan in the third week of May to discuss governance issues with a view to finalizing 300 million dollars governance and devolution loan.

The Capital Market Development Loan, amounting to 250 million dollars, he said, will also be discussed and finalized during the mission’s visit. Similarly, he said, 150 million dollars Rural Road and Water project for Punjab and Sindh will also be finalized.

The government is also seeking separate funds from the World Bank for implementing governance reforms. However, both the ADB and the World Bank have reportedly asked the government to increase transparency and accountability in all its administrative operations. They believed that implementing broad based governance reforms was vital for sustainability and effectiveness of the macroeconomic framework.

The government has agreed with both the donors that without governance reforms the enormous task of reviving growth and reducing poverty could not be addressed, and that sagging growth and rising poverty were, in part, reflection of the failure of governance institutions in Pakistan.