For all its claims to promoting development, the Asian Development Bank is no more than an institution for the promotion of profit - for private capital and for itself. It is a complex apparatus for the creation of ever more favorable market mechanisms and opportunities for the expansion of capital and the accumulation of profits.

The evidence of its true character is only thinly disguised in the Strategy 2020 document and evident to those that have experienced, been exposed to and have directly suffered detriment from the ADB's so-called development projects.

Acknowledging that poverty is “the greatest challenge in the region”, the ADB describes itself as an agent of change in Asia. The ADB asserts that poverty, disparities in well-being within and between nations as well as environmental degradation will be addressed via the framework of Strategy 2020. Qualifying its growth agenda as inclusive, sustainable and in the interests of regional cooperation, it claims to be a partner that holds the “knowledge solutions” for the creation of a “New Asia”. But Strategy 2020 contains the same tired trickle-down growth prescriptions of neo-liberal folklore.

ADB's strategic bias for the private sector is undisguised! Recognizing it as a  principal “driver of change”, Strategy 2020 states that ADB will  “act as a catalyst for investments …help DMCs attract direct private sector investments…[and] promote public–private partnerships in all of its core operational areas…”

According to its 2008 Annual Report, while sovereign lending decreased by 6%, ADB's non-sovereign loans for corporate entities increased by 107% from 2007. ADB plans to “scale up private sector development…in all operational areas, reaching 50% of annual operations by 2020.

The ADB approach to poverty reduction and increased access to social services does not include the provision of livelihood opportunities, nor increased access to available resources. It does not endeavor to increase these basic services (e.g. health and sanitation) that are practically absent in rural Asia.

What ADB does is promote privatization and private sector participation in the provision of formerly government provided goods and services. Driven by a profit-motive, ADB sponsored projects have caused environmental degradation, flooding, displacement and loss of assets and livelihoods - in short, greater poverty -  for thousands in marginalized Asian communities. 

It is unfortunate for developing Asia that in ADB's analysis, it is Asia's “infrastructure deficit” that is the main constraint to “market-led growth and access to social services”. Ludicrously, ADB supposes that addressing this constraint will lead to poverty reduction, through access to basic services (e.g. water and electricity) and social services (such as health). Infrastructure even appears to be an important component in the ADBs goals to promote gender equity!

Strategy 2020 states that ADB will “distribute knowledge in ways that have both an immediate impact and catalytic force—for example, the knowledge of how a DMC can approach public–private partnerships to provide social services and to achieve benefits for the poor…” Thus, ADB's conception of what constitutes good governance and capacity building is geared towards the promotion of market institutions and practices that will facilitate,  enable and favor private over public investment even in the provision of goods and services that responsible governments owe to their constituencies.

Many Asian economies lack the fiscal resources to provide these services but ADB aggravates this lack of fiscal capacity by aggravating the debt burdens of developing Asia without producing meaningful development results. 

It is useful to give a recent example of ADBs ‘development assistance': In 2009, ADB endorsed a Country Partnership Strategy (CPS)  2009-2013 with Pakistan that provides for a US$4.4 billion lending program for facilitating structural change, promoting investment, and improving institutional effectiveness and investment in the energy and infrastructure sectors. In 2008, the national debt of Pakistan was equivalent to 49.8% of its GDP.

ADB's hard-line promotion of privatization and private sector investment is a major conditionality for aid and assistance. Developing country governments with poor revenue generation records, burdensome debt service obligations, budget deficits are pressured into adopting growth strategies that are put forward by the ADB and other multilateral institutions. Under the guise of capacity-building the ADB imposes additional conditionalities for the adoption   of developing country governments to promote private investment.

These conditionalities extend to ADB projects in education. An outline of the master plan for the development of higher education for 2010-2020 is shaped precisely by a proposal containing coherent policies, strategies and a regulatory framework for higher education that is tied up with the cheap labor market. ADB's 
“Strengthening Higher and Vocational Education Project” paints the educational field as a factory for the production of technical and skilled workers “needed for enterprise productivity and profitability.“ Such project is well underway in Mongolia this year.

The ADB track record is one of failed and inimical infrastructure projects. All over Asia, protests and opposition to its projects have been rife. Offering “knowledge solutions” in the form of technical assistance, ADB designed projects have repeatedly damaged the environment, destroyed livelihoods and violated the human rights of thousands of Asian communities.

Feigning an intent to foster more inclusive partnerships, the ADB has failed to hold meaningful dialogue with the communities that were adversely affected by its infrastructure projects and ignored project reports that revealed negative effects and even violations of ADB's own policies. Even more shameful, thousands of affected households have protested that compensation for displacement and other damages was either insufficient or completely absent.

The sovereign lending operations of the ADB are more commercial than they are concessional. Total sovereign lending of ADB in 2008, amounted to US$ 8.7 Billion.  79 % of this amount was from its Ordinary Capital Resources, (OCR) which carry more than less, commercial terms. Only 21% or US $ 21 billion was from the concessional facility referred to as the Asian Development Fund (ADF).

In addition, the ADB has as of yet,  relatively small, but growing equity operations component to its private sector operations. This amount has increased by 54%,  from approximately US$ 80 Million in 2007 to US$123.1 Million in 2008.

Yet another strategy for opening and exploiting new markets, the ADB is a strong endorser of “regional cooperation and integration” (RCI). It is in hot pursuit of opportunities for the hegemony of capital rich countries and institutions. However, it warns that Asia also needs to pursue “open regionalism,” keeping trade and investment links open with the rest of the world.

Finally, ADBs plan in the light of the financial crisis is to increase its available OCR by 30% and the concessional ADF by 20%. It will continue to increase non-sovereign financial flows and focus on infrastructure and strengthening financial markets.

Couched in development language ADB's Strategy 2020 elaborates an approach that is no different from the neo-liberal trickle–down approach of the Washington consensus. Reliance on market forces concomitantly reduces the role of governments in implementing social objectives through economic programs. In this context, development of the domestic economy is forsaken in favor of openness and integration with the world market. The same approach has created extreme unevenness in economic development and opened up Asian economies to greater risk from fluctuations of international markets.

ADB's adherence to the tenets of the neoliberal doctrine is responsible for the creation of monopolies in commodities that are most basic to human needs - water, oil and electricity. Privatization is accountable for fostering the most effective form of social exclusion by depriving citizens of access to basic services like health care, housing and education.

Clearly, ADB's justification of its preferential option for the private sector has only drained Third World economies of their capacity to develop independently. ADB has virtually no programs to promote domestic livelihoods, industrial or agricultural.

ADB's support for private sector-led development has systematically dislocated communities in various parts of the region to pave the way for private business to realize its projected profits from capital-intensive but highly profitable investments such as infrastructure. This enthusiastic partnership with the private sector has resulted in accrued environmental costs exacerbated by the production of harmful climate-changing technologies needed for the extraction of super-profits.

ADB claims to sponsor growth that is inclusive and sustainable but this is refuted by its own track record.

The ADB's development double-talk fails to disguise its  Profit Agenda.

The Asian Development Bank is not a genuine development actor, it is a profit enabling and a profit taking institution!

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