VOA慢速英语 2007 0611a

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.   

The Asian Development Bank was created in nineteen sixty-six, two years after the African Development Bank. Today both of them are talking about needed reforms to better serve their member countries. Last month we looked at the issues in Africa where there is still widespread need for development aid.

The situation is different for the Asia-Pacific area. The Asian Development Bank was created to raise money from rich industrial nations for loans to support economic growth. Now there are surpluses¹ in Asia, and less and less need for those loans.

Rajat Nag² is managing director general of the bank; we called him in Manila. He says the bank is debating how to deal with the two faces of Asia. Economic growth in many countries has been great -- ten percent a year in China, for example. The bank's members have about two trillion dollars in savings³ that could be invested. Yet more than six hundred million people in Asia are still without clean water.

And Rajat Nag says by the year twenty-twenty, almost two billion Asians will still be living on less than two dollars a day. The bank will continue to be supportive for those countries, he says.

 
Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda answers a reporter question in Kyoto
Many of the reforms that the bank is considering come from a report released in late March by an independent committee. Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda asked for a study looking ahead to two thousand twenty.

Supachai Panitchpakdi, head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, chaired the committee. He discussed the report during the bank's board of governors meeting last month in Kyoto, Japan. He urged the bank to change with Asia's economic rise but to continue its poverty reduction efforts in poor countries.

Rajat Nag predicts that reforms will help connect local borrowers with local lenders. Like other international lenders, the Asian Development Bank may also become more of a knowledge bank for technical aid. Mister Nag says the bank will be a partner and not a competitor of other development banks.

The proposed reforms will be examined over the next eight to ten months. Rajat Nag says a final plan might be presented and approved at next year's Asian Development Bank meeting in Madrid, Spain.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jill Moss⁴. Our report two weeks ago on the African Development Bank can be found at voaspecialenglish.com.

 

1 surpluses   

剩余额（surplus的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The United States tried to dispose of its grain surpluses. 美国努力把过剩粮食处理掉。
• Surpluses may be dissipated by accumulating reserves or lending overseas. 顺差则可以转化为储备的积累或对海外的放款。

2 nag   

v.(对…)不停地唠叨；n.爱唠叨的人

参考例句：

• Nobody likes to work with a nag.谁也不愿与好唠叨的人一起共事。
• Don't nag me like an old woman.别像个老太婆似的唠唠叨叨烦我。

3 savings   

n.存款，储蓄

参考例句：

• I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
• By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。

4 moss   

n.苔，藓，地衣

参考例句：

• Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
• He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。