Asian Development Fund

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has experienced sustained high growth rates, with average economic growth of about 6% per year. However, despite a rapid decline in poverty rates, recent Asian Development Bank estimates suggest that around 600 million people in the region are surviving on less than US$1 a day.

Non-income poverty is proving to be persistent, as evidenced by the millions of children who still live in hunger, as well as unacceptably high maternal and child mortality, poor quality education in many countries, and lack of access to adequate water and sanitation. The region is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day—a significant accomplishment. However, the Asia-Pacific region is unlikely to meet the MDGs for reducing non-income poverty in areas such as health, education, and sanitation.

Since 1973, the Asian Development Fund (ADF) has been a major instrument for enabling equitable and sustainable development for the Asia-Pacific region through concessional financing. ADF, funded by ADB’s donor member countries, offers grants and loans at very low interest rates to help reduce poverty in ADB’s poorest borrowing countries.

Initial contributions to the ADF were pledged in 1973 (ADF I). Since then, ADF has been replenished eight times, with the most recent replenishment (ADF IX) covering 2005–2008. Under ADF IX, ADF rose to particularly complex challenges: assisting countries in transition from post-conflict situations to peace and stability, combating HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases, and supporting capacity building.

Over the past 7 years, ADB, through ADF, has

• built 38,000 schools
• built or improved 6,700 health facilities
• given 208,500 impoverished households clean water connections
• irrigated 336,000 hectares of land
• built and rehabilitated 42,000 kilometers of roads—more than the circumference of Earth
• built 3,600 bridges to connect people to jobs, markets, and services
• provided over 820,000 households with new energy connections
• installed approximately 110,000 communications lines

Although challenges to development remain in the Asia-Pacific region—and new challenges such as global climate change are putting particular pressure on developing member countries— ADF has been an important tool for positive change. Since 2001, ADF has provided more than $1.5 billion a year for programs that help poor families escape poverty. During 2006–2007 alone, 95 loan and grant projects totaling $4 billion were made to 21 developing member countries, and projects were put in place that would affect several countries simultaneously.

On this site, we tell the stories of how ADF is changing people’s lives.