Last year it was the eurozone, this year it was Japan. The country's influence loomed over this year’s Asian Development Bank (ADB) annual meeting, both in terms of its economic impact on the region and its influence on the ADB itself. And while the woes of the eurozone were not far from people’s thoughts, Europe did not dominate discussions as it had done the previous year, when delegates were worried about the impact the continent's troubled economies would have on their Asian counterparts.
This year’s meeting struck a more positive note, as Asia’s growth story seems to be intact. “The mood last year was a bit more tentative,” said Rajat Nag, the ADB’s managing director-general. Although the crisis in Europe is far from over, he added that “it was not the catastrophe that we had feared".
