The Quiet Integrationist

• Author: Jeremy Clift profiles Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda
• Position: Senior Editor on the staff of Finance & Development

In his first year at the helm of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Haruhiko Kuroda has had a roller-coaster ride, trying to help the region grapple with the risks of a bird flu pandemic as it struggles to recover from the lingering effects of the devastating Asian tsunami and Pakistan's deadly earthquake. "The images of ordinary citizens pulling friends and neighbors from the rubble will be indelibly etched on our minds," says the soft-spoken former Japanese currency policy tsar, who took over as ADB president in February of last year.

But the string of natural disasters (see Box 1) has not deflected Kuroda in his determination to make the Manila-based bank a catalyst for change in Asia-a region that is modernizing rapidly and has already become a powerhouse of the global economy. "Since taking over, Kuroda has put the ADB at the center of the drive to promote economic integration in Asia," former ADB insider Karti Sandilya told F&D.

In a series of speeches from Tokyo to Washington over the past year, he has outlined an ambitious agenda to promote a new financial architecture for Asia. It is part of a well-thought-out personal vision for a more integrated Asia now that the world's most populous region has recovered from the debilitating financial crisis of 1997-98 (see Box 2).

Box 1 Testing times for the ADB

The ADB, which was founded in 1966 and has 64 member countries, lends about $6.0 billion a year to developing countries in Asia and the Pacific. It reacted quickly to the recent string of natural disasters that rocked the region, pumping in money to aid recovery. To help communities swamped by the December 26, 2004, tsunami in which nearly 300,000 died, the ADB launched the largest grant program in its history. To date, its total approved funding for tsunami-affected countries is $851.4 million-part of a global effort to rebuild areas of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and India.

To help Pakistan after last October's earthquake that killed more than 70,000 and left hundreds of thousands homeless, the ADB pledged assistance worth $1.3 billion. It also set aside another $470 million to support national action plans against avian flu. Kuroda is pressing for coordinated measures to avert a bird flu pandemic in Asia, warning that if the virus becomes transmissible between humans it could cause more than 4.5 million deaths in China and Southeast Asia within a year.

A career Japanese finance ministry technocrat who was an advisor to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on international monetary issues, Kuroda aims to harness the ADB to foster closer Asian regional integration and an eventual single Asian currency by harmonizing rules and legislation, boosting intraregional trade and investment while discouraging overlapping and competing bilateral trade accords, building infrastructure and expertise, and encouraging regional exchange rate cooperation and coordination.

Soft spoken but determined

At first glance, Kuroda is an unlikely champion to spearhead Asia's transformation. A former tax expert, he is bookish and thoughtful rather than charismatic. He talks softly and has a dry wit. For years at the Japanese Finance Ministry, he lived in the shadow of his better-known predecessor, Eisuke Sakakibara. Indeed, when Kuroda took over from Sakakibara as Japan's top international financial official in 1999, the contrast could not have been greater.

Sakakibara, dubbed Mr. Yen by the media for his flamboyant and outspoken comments in defense of the Japanese economy, loved the limelight and relished his ability to rattle international markets. In contrast, Kuroda is more discreet and cautious. He prefers measured understatement to showmanship, selecting his words with academic precision.

Born in Kyushu, in southern Japan, in October 1944, he initially...