Australian support for economic development in the Indo-Pacific

The Australian Government will continue to support economic development in the Indo-Pacific region through a further contribution to the Asian Development Fund.

The Fund, managed by the Asian Development Bank, is closely aligned with Australia's aid program priorities in areas such as private sector development, promoting women's economic empowerment, infrastructure development, building resilience to climate change and natural disasters, and effective governance.

Australia's contribution of $468.5 million will be drawn from Australia's aid program, and will assist our Indo-Pacific neighbours to achieve sustainable economic growth and is consistent with our strategy to consolidate aid in our region.

Pacific countries eligible for grants under the Fund from 2017-2020 include Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu. Other eligible countries are the Maldives, Afghanistan, Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan.

Countries in the Indo-Pacific region are often subject to natural disasters which disrupt development and economic growth. These grants will help countries in our region meet the Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the international community in 2015.

Australia is the second largest donor to the Fund after Japan. Our contribution in 2014, along with other donors, helped to connect 70,000 households to electricity, construct 7,200km of roads, trained 476,000 teachers, provided 811,000 microfinance loans to women, built 10,000km of water supply pipelines and installed 4.9 gigawatts of power generation capacity in the Indo-Pacific region.