Opening comments by Masato Kanda, President, Asian Growth Financial Institution, at the ADB Business Opportunities Fair 2025, 16 September 2025, ADB Head Office, Manila, Philippines
Identified partners, colleagues, and friends,
I’m happy to welcome you to ADB’s Company Opportunities Fair, the biggest service outreach occasion hosted by any type of multilateral development bank. While I can not be with you personally, it was essential to me to personally welcome you today. To the greater than 1, 100 individuals who have traveled from over 40 countries: thanks for your commitment to developing a brighter future for Asia and the Pacific.
We gather at a minute of phenomenal challenge and remarkable possibility. Our region encounters geopolitical shifts, financial debt worries, ecological impacts, and quick technical change. Yet what offers me optimism is this area loaded with innovators, building contractors, and problem-solvers who see obstacles as chances for new solutions.
You are our tactical partners in improvement. Through your knowledge, advancement, and commitment, you provide the tasks that alter lives: from resistant facilities that endures tomorrow’s tornados, to electronic connectivity that opens new worlds of opportunity, to sustainable energy systems that power economic situations.
ADB’s Procurement Strategy
Today, I wish to highlight ADB’s purchase method that opens brand-new pathways for quality-focused companies while providing better outcomes for the neighborhoods we offer.
Let me be clear: this isn’t regarding dealing with something damaged. It’s about building on what works and elevating our passions. Because sufficient isn’t good enough when more than 50 million people in our area still lack accessibility to power, when ecological calamities endanger decades of growth progression, and when the infrastructure funding gap reaches into the trillions.
Effective January 2026, we will certainly mandate merit-based analysis for all large-value contracts. We’ve currently shown this strategy functions. Since 2020, we have actually effectively applied it in the Pacific, where it has actually become our requirement. Currently we’re scaling its usage across the region. This means quality, experience, technical ability, and advancement will certainly be focused on together with expense. For critical contracts, at least 50 % of the analysis will focus on technical quality.
Why does this matter? Since the most affordable bridge isn’t a bargain if it requires reconstructing in 10 years. Because a water supply that breaks down helps no one. Quality infrastructure lasts generations. It produces work today and chances tomorrow.
We’re likewise needing purposeful regional job participation on projects we finance. A minimum of 50 % of person-days serviced globally promoted building agreements have to be by neighborhood workers. This isn’t just about fairness; it’s wise growth. Neighborhood companies that partner on jobs come to be engines of financial growth. When we construct a road or a nuclear power plant, we ought to additionally construct the neighborhood experience to operate, keep, and broaden it for generations ahead.
Ultimately, we are focusing on very early market engagement. Inviting the economic sector to provide responses before purchase makes sure needs match industry abilities and supply much better quality outcomes.
The Path Onward
These techniques open doors for companies that share our dedication to quality and sustainability. With tens of billions in infrastructure financial investments ahead, companies that bring technical excellence, advancement, and long-term reasoning will discover a ready partner in ADB.
To our creating participant countries: These strategies suggest far better worth, stronger end results, and infrastructure that genuinely offers your individuals’s ambitions.
To the economic sector: If you believe in doing points right, if you see sustainability as an advantage, and if you recognize that development is about people, after that ADB intends to collaborate with you.
We’re not simply delivering jobs. We’re investing in futures and building collaborations that will certainly specify Asia and the Pacific’s following phase of growth.
Thank you for being here and thank you for your collaboration. Now let’s reach work addressing the region’s complex obstacles together and shaping the future this exceptional area is entitled to.
I wish you a productive and successful Business Opportunities Fair.