Thiruvananthapuram:The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) 39th Annual Governors’ Meeting (AGM) is happening from 3-6 May 2006 in Hyderabad,India. India is a prominent member of the ADB. After China, India is thelargest borrower from the Bank. Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, is the Chair of the Board of Governors of the ADB. Projects financed by the ADB range from energy and power sector restructuring to flood control, irrigation, water policy reform, urban development, highways, administrative and fiscal reforms. The projects and programmes have been undertaken across the country, from Jammu & Kashmir, Uttaranchal, West Bengal and the North East, to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu

The policy reforms and conditionalities that ADB demands from the Governments, include, adopting laws and regulations that favour private sector involvement in key sectors, market-friendly restructuring and reforms in sectors for which ADB support is being sought, corporatisation and privatisation of public enterprises and utilities, creating a flexible labour force, commercialization of agricultural
production and trade and investment liberalisation.

Since 2000, peoples’ movements, communities affected by the ADB
projects, academics, researchers, activists, labour unions and NGOs have come together at the venues of these AGMs to hold parallel events on the impacts of ADB loans and to oppose and protest the institution and its brand of development policy. From Thailand to Turkey, the ADB Governors have faced mass mobilisations by people affected by its policies.

The Peoples' Forum against ADB (PFAADB), an alliance of 97 social movements, struggle groups and NGOs from across Asia is calling on all people's movements and civil society groups to observe 5 May 2006 as the Global Day of Protest against the Asian Development Bank, when ADB Governors will officially inaugurate the Annual Meeting

Kerala is a focal state of the ADB. There are active campaigns against the ADB loan to Kerala. The seminar jointly organised by EQUATIONS and Kerala Swathanthra Matsya Thozhilai Federation (KSMTF) as part of the Global Day of Protest against ADB at the Press Club hall has called for a resolution demanding the political parties to clear their position on receiving conditional loans from World Bank and Asian Development Bank to decipher the economic situation in Kerala. The meeting has also appealed to the newly forming government in the State to make projects to effectively utilise the non-resident Keralite deposit of around 60000 crores for Kerala development

Papers were presented at the seminar by Prof. Varghese George and Prof.
Koshy Mathew and the session was moderated by Shri. Roy Mathew (The Hindu). Dr. Thomas Varghese, Fr. Eugene Pereira, Sreedhar (Thanal), PG Padmanabhan (Former Vice President, Kumarakom Grama Panchayat), Saroop Roy(EQUATIONS), T. Peter (KSMTF), Anto Alias (KSMTF) spoke on the occasion.