Did you know?

• ADB aims for an Asia and Pacific free from poverty. Over half the population remains poor, with one child in 20 dying before the age of 5, over 250,000 women dying annually from childbirth and pregnancy, over five million living with HIV AIDS and 3/5 of global TB cases found in the region.
• 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 1.8 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:

• built or upgraded over 135,000 classrooms;
• trained over 660,000 teachers;
• built or upgraded over 44,300 kilometers (km) of roads;
• installed or rehabilitated over 17,800 km of water supply pipes;
• upgraded sanitation in over 269,000 households;
• improved over 1.8 million hectares of land as a result of irrigation, drainage, and flood management initiatives;
• installed 300 megawatts of new generating capacity, and built or upgraded more than 34,127 kilometers of transmission and distribution lines; and
• enabled new microfinance accounts and end borrowers to grow to over 2.7 million.