Baku, Azerbaijan, April 8
By Emin Aliyev - Trend:
Additional funding within the framework of the Azerbaijan Water Users Associations Development Support Project by the World Bank will be allocated in 2015, according to the bank's Baku office.
"Initially, it was planned to allocate additional funds for the 2015 fiscal year, which begins in July 2014. The project's implementation process is estimated very well, it's pretty large, important and has sufficient priority and it is not surprising that there is an initiative to expand it," the representative office said.
With regard to official negotiations on a credit agreement, it is not known when they will begin, according to the World Bank representative.
"Of course, the negotiations will be started in June of this year, but they will not begin earlier than the government is ready to decide on the volume of additional funding and make a request to the World Bank. At some stages, the discussions touched upon the provision of additional loan of up to several hundred million dollars, but now the exact amount of funds required for the project have not been decided yet, " WB Baku office said.
The Azerbaijani government and World Bank signed a credit agreement to allocate $80 million to implement the WUAP project in October, 2011.
The International Development Association (IDA) allocated $76.8 million and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) allocated $3.2 million of the total amount of credit available. The share of the government in the project is $34.3 million. Total cost of the project is $114.3 million.
The project will increase the productivity of 760,000 small farms in 27 Azerbaijani regions, which promotes the rehabilitation of irrigation and drainage networks.
Translated by S.I.