The Department for International Development (DfID), with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, will host 'Asia 2015: Promoting Growth, Ending Poverty', 6-7 March in London. The meeting is to focus attention on building new forms of partnerships to eradicate poverty in Asia and aims to forge agreement on how Asian countries, development agencies and the international community can meet the remaining Millennium Development Goals.

DfID says its new partnership agreements run for up to 10 years. "One of the most recent examples of this new approach is the multi-year allocation of budget support to the Government of Tanzania, announced by DFID just a few days ago, on 30 January 2006. This decision was based on strong and credible commitments by the Government of Tanzania to maintain and build the conditions in which poverty reduction can be achieved effectively," it says.

"In the past, Nepal made excellent progress in developing policy on foreign aid that encouraged just this type of approach. With peace and stability, it should be possible to restart a dialogue on how to move to these 'state of the art' partnerships," added DfID.

The conference website is at www.asia2015conference.org.