Asian Development Bank

Asia Regional Information Center

The concept of the Asia Regional Information Center (ARIC) first emerged at the Meeting on Development Cooperation: Responding to the Asia Crisis held in Sydney on 5 March 1999. This meeting gave high priority to the need for accurate and timely information on the economic and social impacts of the Asian crisis and how the recovery was progressing. Such information was seen as being vital to decision-makers in making informed choices on how best to respond to the crisis and to sustain the recovery's momentum.

Acting on a proposal by the Australian Government, the meeting agreed that an Internet-based facility would provide the most efficient means of gathering, collating, and disseminating this information. The Australian Government subsequently invited the ADB to house the ARIC at its headquarters in Manila, which ultimately resulted in ADB's approving a regional technical assistance project for this purpose that is funded entirely through a grant from AusAID.

The objectives of the ARIC web site are to:

• monitor the social and economic impacts of the Asian crisis and the recovery process with a view to facilitating identification of the remaining policy agenda for a sustained social as well as economic recovery;
• provide information on the response of the international community, concerned governments, nongovernment organizations, and civil society-at-large to the crisis; and
• monitor and contribute to ongoing discussions of policy reform in response to the crisis.

The ARIC web site is designed primarily for use by government agencies, the international assistance community, private-sector users, NGOs, economic policy analysts, academic researchers, and journalists. It includes seven sections: Recovery Watch, Social Dimensions, International Assistance, Country Focus, ARIC Indicators, Meetings and Conferences, and Key Hyperlinks.

Under the ARIC initiative, REMU staff and consultants will also prepare the Asia Recovery Report twice a year. ARIC can be accessed at the address http://aric.adb.org or through the ADB web site at http://www.adb.org.