President of the Asian Development Bank Hirohiko Kuroda chaired the AGM.

Earlier in the day, an open forum was held on ADB-NGO-Civil Society cooperation on the development of ADB's energy strategy.

Woo Chong Um, director of Energy, Transport and Water Division of ADB, told a press briefing that diversification of energy sources is vital in achieving the desired goal of energy security for the countries lacking appropriate energy sources.

The ADB chief, Haruhiko Kuroda, also addressed a press briefing in connection with the opening of the bank's AGM.

He said despite achieving impressive rates of growth and making substantial headway in reducing poverty, Asia still remains home to two thirds of the world's poor and the bank should not lose sight of it.

The gap between the rich and the poor is widening in Asia with hundreds of millions still living in poverty, added.

Responding to a query on the ADB's role in supporting good governance and fighting corruption, Kuroda said good governance and fighting against corruption is important for all countries, especially for the developing countries.

The ADB has adopted the policy of good governance and providing assistance and expertise to a number of countries including Bangladesh in strengthening the structure of anti-corruption bodies, the ADB chief said.

AFP adds: ADB governors, who are finance ministers of the Asian countries, gathering for the public lender's annual meeting agreed that an overhaul was needed, but there were divisions on how to reform.

"The ADB must adjust the current model or else at the extreme it will become obsolete in the new Asia," said Indonesia's ADB governor, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati. "It is necessary for the ADB to be reborn as a new ADB," added Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi.

But some member nations fear the region's poorest could be overlooked if the ADB shifts too far towards other areas such as road development and telecommunications.

Afghanistan and India led calls for the Asian Development Bank not to forget its original objective.

India's acting ADB governor, D. Subbarao, also urged the bank not to forget its core goal. "Helping reduce poverty must remain the fundamental objective," he said.

The ADB -- whose biggest shareholders are the United States and Japan, followed by China and India -- is considering an ambitious modernisation as many developing Asian nations move toward middle income status.

An outside panel of experts appointed by the bank last month urged the ADB to "radically transform itself," estimating that by 2020 widespread absolute poverty would have been beaten in most Asian countries.

The ADB's primary role when it was established in 1966 was to borrow money from the capital markets to lend to developing Asian economies that might struggle to raise affordable funds on their own.

But many Asian nations can now easily raise private funds themselves and experts warn that the region is now awash with too much capital, not too little.

"The ADB just cannot survive (as it is) in the future in a region with a capital surplus," said the report's lead author, Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The expert report said the development bank should increase its focus on supporting more equitable and environmentally sustainable growth, and take a more regional approach instead of concentrating on individual countries.

But several nations expressed concern about the idea of an Asia-wide focus.

"We have a concern that this regional cooperation, while important, might dilute the ADB's focus of aid from helping individual countries," said India's Subbarao.

"These problems of development have to be fought and solved at the national level," said ADB governor Mirza Azizul Islam, Bangladesh's finance adviser.