BY EDISON JOSEPH GONZALES
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will mobilize up to $30 billion by 2030 for Asean priorities, as the region faces an infrastructure investment need of at least $210 billion a year, with the Philippines hosting a high-level regional conference as this year’s Asean chair.
The commitment includes public and private sector financing, project preparation and support for cross-border coordination. ADB president Masato Kanda announced it at the Asean Summit in May and urged governments Wednesday to move faster from plans to financed projects at the Asean High-Level Conference on Connectivity in Manila.
“Asean cannot wait for the next shock to expose its weakest links,” Kanda said, addressing ambassadors and policymakers at the conference. “Every connection delayed is resilience deferred. From power grids to digital networks, the connections our economies depend on are no longer a convenience. They are the foundation of economic security.”
Participants at the conference discussed shared bottlenecks to infrastructure connectivity, including tight budgets, too few bankable projects and financing that remains fragmented across borders.
Kanda told delegates that the region’s prosperity depends on goods, energy, capital, data and people moving efficiently across borders, and that no single country can deliver that alone.
The ADB’s commitment includes support for the Asean Power Grid. The bank plans to commit up to $10 billion through 2035 to help build the region’s cross-border grid.