BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 17. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has secured enough votes from its Board of Governors to ratify a landmark amendment to its founding charter, allowing the bank to lift a long-standing lending cap and expand annual financing to more than $36 billion, Trend reports via the bank.
The change removes the limitation set out in Article 12.1 of the ADB Charter and will enable the bank to scale up support for developing member countries without seeking a general capital increase. The amendment, ADB’s first since its creation in 1966, will take effect three months after members are formally notified.
"This is a historic decision," ADB President Masato Kanda said. "Removing this limitation means ADB can now move forward with an ambitious plan to increase our annual financing commitments without placing any burden on our shareholders".
The voting threshold was reached on November 14 with support from 61 members, though voting remains open until the end of the month.
The reform is part of ADB’s broader effort to make more efficient use of its capital and strengthen assistance to vulnerable countries. Under its Capital Utilization Plan, the bank aims to raise annual commitments from $24 billion in 2024 to over $36 billion by 2034, supported by earlier capital management reforms and exposure-exchange agreements with other development banks.
ADB said the expanded lending capacity will help it meet its 2030 goals, including quadrupling private-sector financing to $13 billion a year and ensuring that 40% of sovereign operations directly support private-sector development.