A month after assuming office as the new president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Masatsugu Asakawa has pledged the multilateral lender’s full support for the Philippines’ proactive development agenda during a courtesy call on President Rodrigo Duterte. In a statement, the ADB said during the call on Monday night, Asakawa thanked Duterte for Manila’s first-ever contribution to the Asian Development Fund, which provides grants to the institution’s lower-income developing member countries in Asia and the Pacific to reduce poverty and improve people’s quality of life. At a dinner after the visit, Asakawa also congratulated the Philippine government for bringing down the national poverty rate to 16.6 percent in 2018 from 23.3 percent in 2015, thanks to the country’s high economic growth rates, job creation, and expanded social assistance programs, it added. The government aims to further reduce the national poverty rate to 11 percent by 2022.
