ADB President visiting Sri Lanka next week
View(s):Asian Development Board (ADB) President Takehiko Nakao will arrive in Sri Lanka on Tuesday and during the June 17-19 stay will meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa and visit places of interest to the organisation.
This announcement was made on Wednesday by Suree Widowati, ADB Sri Lanka Country Director, during a media cocktail at the Cinnamon Grand hotel in Colombo.
She said Mr. Nakao, who took over as ADB chief in April 2013, wanted to come earlier but the visit didn’t work out due to other engagements. He would be also meeting senior Government Ministers and other officials and would be visiting ADB projects in the north and the south, among other areas.
The last visit by an ADB President was when Haruhiko Kuroda visited Sri Lanka in May 2010. Ms. Widowati is also a new ADB appointee to Sri Lanka but has served earlier in the ADB’s Colombo mission and in a speech, in her first meeting with the media, showed a lot of familiarity with the Sri Lankan landscape, rattling off names of towns like Hambantota, Amparai, Batticaloa and Galle (among others) with ease.