The Bank of China (BOC) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have agreed to explore possible opportunities for collaboration.
Specifically, regional trade finance, clean energy, infrastructure development, microfinance and institutional capacity lending are all areas that the two banks have agreed to work closer on.
Philip Erquaga, director general of ADB’s private sector operations department, comments: “ADB and BOC foresee several opportunities for enhanced collaboration in important areas over the coming years with priorities including climate change and low carbon development…small and medium enterprise financing, microfinance, joint research and knowledge sharing and corporate governance and risk management involvement.”
Furthermore, the two banks are looking to cement their ties by creating a regular staff exchange programme, with two corporate staff from BOC due to join ADB’s South Asia department to work on infrastructure projects in the second half of 2010.
“All these initiatives show that there is huge potential and enormous opportunity for our future business and infrastructure cooperation,” notes Zaiqun Zhou, BOC’s executive vice-president.
ADB already has a strong relationship with BOC, having conducted five technical assistance projects for the Chinese bank since 2006, as well as providing training under its trade finance facilitation programme for BOC staff.
Also, ADB is BOC’s fifth-largest shareholder and in a statement confirms that it will “remain a long-term strategic investor” of the bank.
Last Updated July 13, 2010
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