Press Releases

1. On Friday, March 18, the Sixth Asian Development Forum was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Relevant officials from Asian countries and relevant International Organizations attended the meeting, while Deputy Director-General, International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Mr. Shigeru Ushio, and Vice President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Mr. Yasushi Kanzaki attended from the Japanese side.

2. Under the theme of “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Voice from Asia”, required national policy changes and enhancing global partnership for the implementation of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) as well as key issues for inclusive growth in Asia such as infrastructure development and industrial human resource development were discussed from the perspectives of Asian countries in the meeting.

3. At the forum, the participants shared the view that (1) it is useful to use SDGs as a guide to policies for sustainable development and organized efforts to implement SDGs are important, (2) in implementing SDGs, such issues as the mechanism for monitoring the progress as well as financing the implementation requires full participation of multi-stakeholders in the process, (3) to bridge the massive gap of supply and demand of infrastructure, which has become a bottleneck for sustainable growth in Asia, it is important to focus not solely on quantity but also on quality and to promote quality infrastructure investment complying with stages of development and local contexts of respective countries, (4) as for industrial human resource development in Asia, identifying needs, sharing the know-how and knowledge and coordinating with the private sector are important.

4. The Asian Development Forum was established through cooperation between Japan and the Republic of Korea, and the past host countries (Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam) have been cooperating with the host country in its management. Under the leadership of Sri Lanka, the host country this time, especially Japan and the Republic of Korea have constructively contributed to the management and discussions of the forum through their close collaboration.