Records
ADB President Kanda’s Statements at the ADB Company Opportunities Fair 2025
16 September 2025
Differentiated companions, colleagues, and close friends,
I’m happy to welcome you to ADB’s Company Opportunities Fair, the largest company outreach event organized by any multilateral development bank. While I can not be with you in person, it was very important to me to personally welcome you today. To the more than 1, 100 individuals who have traveled from over 40 countries: thanks for your dedication to creating a brighter future for Asia and the Pacific.
We gather at a minute of extraordinary challenge and phenomenal potential. Our area deals with geopolitical shifts, financial obligation burdens, ecological influences, and quick technical transformation. Yet what gives me optimism is this space filled with innovators, building contractors, and problem-solvers who see obstacles as possibilities for brand-new remedies.
You are our calculated partners in makeover. Through your know-how, innovation, and devotion, you provide the projects that change lives: from resilient facilities that withstands tomorrow’s storms, to digital connection that opens brand-new globes of possibility, to sustainable energy systems that power economies.
ADB’s Procurement Strategy
Today, I want to highlight ADB’s purchase method that opens brand-new paths for quality-focused companies while supplying better end results for the areas we serve.
Allow me be clear: this isn’t about taking care of something damaged. It has to do with improving what works and increasing our passions. Since good enough isn’t sufficient when more than 50 million people in our region still do not have accessibility to electricity, when environmental catastrophes intimidate years of development progress, and when the framework financing gap gets to into the trillions.
Reliable January 2026, we will mandate merit-based assessment for all large-value agreements. We have actually already verified this method works. Considering that 2020, we have actually efficiently executed it in the Pacific, where it has become our criterion. Currently we’re scaling its use throughout the region. This indicates top quality, experience, technological capacity, and development will be prioritized together with cost. For critical agreements, a minimum of 50 % of the examination will concentrate on technical excellence.
Why does this issue? Since the cheapest bridge isn’t a bargain if it requires reconstructing in 10 years. Because a water supply that damages down assists nobody. Quality framework lasts generations. It develops tasks today and chances tomorrow.
We’re also calling for meaningful local work involvement on jobs we finance. At least 50 % of person-days dealt with internationally promoted building contracts need to be by regional workers. This isn’t practically fairness; it’s wise development. Regional companies that companion on projects come to be engines of financial growth. When we build a roadway or a nuclear power plant, we must likewise build the neighborhood knowledge to operate, keep, and broaden it for generations ahead.
Ultimately, we are focusing on early market interaction. Inviting the economic sector to offer feedback prior to procurement makes certain requirements match sector capacities and supply much better top quality results.
The Course Onward
These techniques open doors for services that share our dedication to high quality and sustainability. With 10s of billions in framework financial investments ahead, companies that bring technological excellence, innovation, and long-lasting reasoning will certainly find a ready companion in ADB.
To our establishing participant nations: These approaches suggest better worth, more powerful end results, and framework that really offers your individuals’s goals.
To the private sector: If you count on doing things right, if you see sustainability as an advantage, and if you recognize that growth has to do with people, after that ADB wishes to collaborate with you.
We’re not simply providing jobs. We’re purchasing futures and building partnerships that will specify Asia and the Pacific’s following chapter of growth.
Thank you for being right here and thanks for your collaboration. Currently let’s reach work solving the region’s complex difficulties together and forming the future this amazing area is worthy of.
I want you a productive and successful Business Opportunities Fair.