Life for about three million people in the People’s Republic of China is about to get better with the cleanup of the Songhua River.

Are drinking water and better toilets finally available in Punjab? Learn how ADB has been working on bringing these services to one of Pakistan's poorest provinces.

Gender equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) people is usually viewed through a human rights lens, but equality and inclusion of LGBT people are also important economic development issues. This seminar, involving a panel of experts, explored some of these issues and their implications for development work in the Asia and Pacific region.

Brian Tenorio is the Chair of the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce. He is also CEO and Founder of Kape Coffee Company and Tenorium Enterprise, also International Consultant for Branding and Design at the Asian Development Bank ealth Organization.



In this ADB seminar, he discussed the positive business outcomes of LGBT-inclusive employment policies and business practices.

Geraldine Roman is a Filipino journalist and politician. She was elected as the Representative of the 1st District of Bataan following the 2016 Philippine elections, becoming the first openly transgender woman elected to the Congress of the Philippines. She, along with other elected lawmakers collectively known as 'equality champs', launched the passage of the anti-discrimination bill on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.



In this ADB seminar, she shared her personal story about how she overcame challenges she faced during her electoral campaign.

M. V. Lee Badgett is a professor of economics and the former director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA’s Williams Institute.



In this ADB seminar, she shared insights on the implications of excluding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in economic development. She highlighted the negative effects of such exclusion at the individual and economic levels and cited the positive correlation of promoting transgender rights to improved Gross Domestic Product.

Can Indonesia's e-procurement system assure an adequate supply of medicine and other healthcare needs? Will the system improve the delivery of vital public health services?

What can business development services do for small and medium enterprises? How can these enterprises leverage more from these services?

While impact evaluation literature of business development services (BDS) on SMEs consistently finds positive effects, BDS usage of small and medium enterprises is still very low. Possible reasons suggested are lack of information about BDS, shortage of credits, and limited availability of BDS. However, most of the existing literature focuses on impacts of demand-side interventions, and empirical evidence about BDS providers is still lacking.

Considering both external and internal factors to determine a firm’s performance is a way to carry out empirical studies using firm-level data. In this presentation, various models are used to analyze the research and development behavior of firms in Thailand.

The difference between health care systems and social security systems for rural and urban areas in the People's Republic of China is quite apparent. There is also an observed trend in the timeline of female migrant workers' life history, particularly the turn out of events before and after pregnancy. Several factors such as contextual and cultural are instrumental for such to happen, but there are policy recommendations that can be considered for the medical services to be more convenient and unconstrained.