The Asian Development Bank has committed a total of about US$17 billion in loans, investment and technological grants in the past two decades to China since it joined the bank in 1986, the bank said Thursday.

The loans were mainly for the sectors of communications infrastructure, energy, urban infrastructure facilities, agriculture and environment across 28 provincial areas.

Addressing a seminar on the two decades of cooperation between China and the bank, Jin Renqing, minister of finance, said China has become the second biggest borrower of loans of the bank and its biggest recipient of technical grants, which helped boost the country's economic progress.

More importantly, the minister said the bank provided China with many valuable policy recommendations on the country's reform and opening to the outside world, macro-economic management and institutional building.

The technical grant projects, totaling 489 by the end of last year, involve agriculture, financial reform, environmental protection, poverty reduction, natural resources, and legal system, the bank said.

The minister also praised the bank for facilitating regional cooperation in Asia, such as economic and social cooperation in sub-Great Mekong River region, which involves China, Vietnam, the Laos, Cambodia and some other Asian countries.

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said China has maintained strong and steady economic growth with remarkable socioeconomic progress in the past two decades, and the bank is proud of the achievements it has made through its cooperation with China.

He reaffirmed the bank's continued active engagement with China to contribute to the country's economic and social development as well as poverty reduction in the whole Asia-Pacific region.

"I am confident that ADB can continue to make an important contribution to economic and social development in the PRC (the People's Republic of China), and by deepening our partnership with China, I know we can also increase our contribution to poverty reduction in Asia and the pacific as a whole," said Kuroda.

ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in the Asia and Pacific region through pro-poor sustainable economic growth, social development, and good governance. Set up in 1966, it is owned by 65 members with 47 from the region.

(China Daily July 7, 2006)