2024 AFE‒ADB Annual Meeting activities were held on 2 May 2024.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions, the Annual Meeting will be held in 2 parts. A meeting will be held on 22 May 2020 at ADB HQ, which will be only for Governors through their designated representatives based in Manila. A full-scale Annual Meeting will be held from 18 to 21 September in Incheon, Korea.
All invitations to register and confirmation are no longer valid. ADB will send out new invitations and registration details to participants.
AFE will advise the revised arrangements for AFE's 34th Annual General Meeting.
The Annual Meeting’s theme was Prosperity through Unity. President Takehiko Nakao commended the Fiji government for being the first Pacific developing member country to host the ADB annual general meeting. With more than 2,000 delegates in attendance, the meeting was the single largest international gathering to ever take place on Fijian shores.
The AFE Chapter Coordinators’ Meeting, Annual General Meeting, and Cocktail Reception were held on 1 May at the Westin Denerau Island Resort and Spa. Participants of the cocktail reception wore colorful Fijian shirts and dresses and had a delightful time reconnecting and strengthening ties. Guests included Bank of Japan Governor, former ADB President, and current AFE member Haruhiko Kuroda and Kumiko Kuroda, ADB President Nakao, as well as several of ADB’s heads of departments.
About 200 members and accompanying persons attended. The Annual General Meeting was standing room only.
The cocktail party was a major success, good food, good drinks, good company, and highlighted by President Nakao’s address and songs by Marimil Francisco (current ADB staff and future AFE member). AFE ran 6 tours for members and partners.
Highlights of ADB's Annual Meeting events included ADB President Nakao's announcement that he supported grandfathering of retirees' pension benefits, and two remarkable speeches European Chapter Coordinator Gunter Hecker has provided to his constituency: one by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and another by the former German President Horst Köhler.
Minutes
AFE President Bong–Suh Lee (BSL) called the meeting to order at 2:00 p.m. The meeting agenda was adopted.
BSL announced for the record that Hans-Juergen Springer (HJS) had been reelected as the executive secretary to serve for another 4 years until 2016. He also announced that the proposal to extend the term of Deputy Executive Secretary Jill Gale de Villa (JGV), by 2 years until 2014, was approved by the vast majority of the 220 members who responded. The extension of JGV’s term was considered necessary to avoid a possible situation of the positions of executive secretary and deputy executive secretary being filled by newly elected officers as a result of simultaneous elections for the 2 positions. A 2-year extension meant elections for the positions could be roughly equally spaced apart in the future.
