Asian Development Bank strenghten co-financing with partner

MANILA, Philippines — The Asian Development Bank announced over the weekend that it has signed an agreement with the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) for increasing their co-financing commitment to allow them to scale up their joint development efforts in Asia Pacific region.

ADB and AFD agreed to increase their co-financing commitment from $3 billion in the past three years to $5 billion in the next three years.

Under the Partnership Framework Agreement (PFA) for 2016 to 2022 that ADB and AFD signed in October 2016, the two institutions had agreed to each dedicate $1.5 billion in co-financing in the first three years of the six-year agreement.

In amending the agreement, they have now decided to increase the amount to $2.5 billion each in the next three years, bringing their combined commitment to $5 billion.

The amended agreement was signed by ADB vice president for Private Sector and Cofinancing Operations Diwakar Gupta and AFD deputy chief operation officer Marie-Hélène Loison on the sidelines of the 12th ADB–AFD High-Level Meeting held at ADB headquarters.

“We are excited to deepen our partnership with AFD to scale up our efforts toward the achievement of inclusive and sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific,” Gupta said.

“This will help strengthen our collaboration in such areas as sustainable cities, urban transport, climate change, and gender mainstreaming,” he said.

Loison said the increase in cofinancing is in line with ADB’s long-term strategy as well as the French government’s commitment to support the transition of developing economies to low-carbon and climate-resilient economies.

“The raising of our cofinancing targets will be accompanied by new collaboration to support economic transitions toward low-carbon and climate-resilient sustainable development in the region,” she said.

ADB and AFD have been collaborating since 1997, when they cofinanced their first project. They hold a high-level consultation meeting once a year to share priorities and promote strategic partnership.

“AFD is one of ADB’s most important bilateral partners in terms of cofinancing,” said ADB Vice-President Shixin Chen, who led this year’s high-level meeting. “However, our partnership goes beyond cofinancing to encompass technical assistance, knowledge production and sharing, research, and exchanges of staff. We look forward to further strengthening our collaboration in the future.”

As part of the amended partnership agreement, ADB and AFD also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to extend their collaboration in urban transport through the “Mobilise Your City” (MYC) partnership.

The MOU was signed by ADB’s Chief Sector Officer Robert Guild and Director of AFD’s East Europe, Middle East, and Asia Department Rémi Genevey.

The MYC global partnership, launched during COP21 by the governments of France and Germany, aims to recognize the role of urban transport in climate change mitigation, while lending support to local and national initiatives for low-carbon urban mobility.

ADB and AFD decided to cooperate to expand the MYC partnership through the implementation of an MYC support program aimed at expanding the pipeline of “climate-smart” projects for sustainable urban mobility in Asia.

Under the MOU, AFD is mobilizing the first tranche of €5 million ($5.7 million) from its grant resources to finance the procurement of consultants for the program. ADB, meanwhile, will allocate its staff resources jointly with AFD to monitor MYC activities and to take part in the policy dialogue with counterparts.