ADB's Kuroda bats for achieving all MDG committments

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Thursday said its president, Haruhiko Kuroda, will address a global summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in New York next week, calling for a concerted action to achieve all the goals committed by governments under the program. The summit will be held from Sept. 20 to 22. The MDGs are a set of specific and time-bound commitments that governments must achieved by 2015, with 1990 data as baseline. These goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and women empowerment, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing global partnership for development. In a statement Thursday, ADB said Kuroda will be joined by representatives of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia, the Pacific, and the United Nations Development Programme to launch a report on the status of the MDGs in Asia Pacific. In the region, about 900 million people — more than two-thirds of the world’s poor — still struggle on less than $1.25 a day. The Philippines recently released its Fourth Progress Report, which will be presented to the UN during the High Level Plenary Meeting on the MDGs in New York. President Benigno Aquino III will represent the Philippines to the UN assembly, making it his first foreign trip as the country’s chief executive. Some government officials earlier said the Philippines only has moderate chances of halving the number of its poor citizens by 2015 — one of eight targets it vowed to fulfill under the MDGs — although it could still meet other targets, including reducing the number of Filipinos whose income cannot provide the basic food requirements. The summit in New York was called by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to take stock of proven MDG initiatives and for governments to commit to a concrete action agenda to achieve the goals in the next five years. —Jesse Edep/VS, GMANews.TV