The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, was today elected as Chairman of the ADB Board of Governors and the country will host the 46th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in New Delhi next year.

“India is very happy to accept the Chair,” Mr Mukherjee said here at the closing business session of the 45th annual meeting of the ADB Board of Governors.

The Finance Minister said while India was the founding member of the ADB in 1966, its lending operations in India began two decades later.

“This 25 years of partnership has been an exciting and challenging journey,” he said, adding the he was “honoured’’.

As a major multilateral lending organisation, the Manila-headquartered ADB has 67 members, of which 48 are from Asia. The US and Japan are the largest shareholders of the bank while India is the fifth largest.

“ADB’s three-year country operations business plan for India for 2012-2014 will provide lending assistance of $6.25 billion to support inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth,” the ADB Secretary, Mr Robert Dawsonm told PTI.

The lending support will go to key areas like transport, energy, urban development, agriculture natural resource management, finance and education.

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