Did you know?

• ADB aims for an Asia and Pacific free from poverty. While it has achieved a significant reduction in extreme poverty, the region remains home to about two-thirds of the world’s extremely poor.
• With $21.72 billion in approved financing in 2011, more than 2,900 employees from 59 countries, ADB in partnership with member governments, independent specialists and other financial institutions is focused on delivering projects that create economic and development impact.
• Economists, sociologists, engineers, gender experts and environmental scientists are amongst the hundreds of professions at the bank working together to reduce poverty.
• Environmental sustainability is a core strategy of ADB’s work as it is the poor that are most severely affected.  Environmental damage and resource depletion are already impeding the region’s development and reducing the quality of life.
• ADB is active in creating the framework for the private sector to be involved in investing in new projects that underpin development and improve the lives of the 1.7 billion people in the region who live on less than $2 a day.
• Since 2000, the Asian Development Fund has transformed the region with the construction of thousands of schools, bridges, health clinics and roads, providing opportunities for people to lift themselves out of poverty.

Over the past 6 years, ADB, through the Asian Development Fund has:

• expanded the access of more than 19 million students to quality education by building or upgrading more than 60,000 classrooms and training 720,000 teachers;
• helped more than 252 million people gain better access to wider economic opportunities and social services by building or upgrading more than 56,000 (km) of roads;  
• provided more than 2.1 million households with access to clean water by installing or rehabilitating about 14,000 km of water supply pipes;
• connected more than 1.8 million households to electricity by building or upgrading more than 35,000 km of power transmission and distribution lines; and
• reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by promoting more efficient and cleaner energy operations.