Land Acquisition in Asia

This book explores the existing and diverse institutional bottlenecks of land acquisition, ranging from legal and social to political and even environmental within the Asian context. It identifies the short- and long-term risks associated with land sale through regional case studies and aims to propose a more sustainable policy framework. One such policy framework proposed is that of Land Trust for mitigating some of these risks. For instance, recent studies argue that land trust or land lease is one of the best ways to increase the rate of return to invite private investors into infrastructure investment and industrialization. 

A rare snapshot of a continent in the process of rapid development, this book offers an invaluable resource for scholars, activists and politicians alike. 

Naoyuki Yoshino is Dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI); Professor Emeritus of Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; and Senior Adviser at the Japan Financial Services Agency’s (FSA) Financial Research Center (FSA Institute). He obtained his PhD from Johns Hopkins University, where his thesis supervisor was Sir Alan Walters (who was Margaret Thatcher’s Economic Adviser). He was appointed board of the Financial Planning Standards Board in 2007, and also served as chairperson of the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s council on Foreign Exchange and its Fiscal System Council (Fiscal Investment and Loan Program Section). He is the President of Financial Education Council organized by the Central Bank of Japan, Financial Services Agency (FSA), Ministry of Education, Cabinet Ministry and private financial institutions.

Saumik Paul is research economist at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). Prior to this, he worked at the Hitotsubashi University, University of Nottingham (Malaysia campus), Osaka University and the World Bank. He is interested in policy relevant research on topics related to structural transformation, productivity growth and land reform. His current projects examine land disputes and the process of industrialization in India, Indonesia and Nepal, and also the role of structural transformation in regional growth and convergence in Japan and other Asian countries.