A team of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will arrive in Baku to attend the ministerial conference CAREC-2020, Neil McKain, Chief of the EBRD Baku Office, told reporters yesterday. The event will be held in Baku at the end of November.
"Paul-Henry Forester, EBRD Regional Director for the South Caucasus, Moldova and Belarus, at the sidelines of his visit to Baku to take place after two weeks, will conduct a number of meetings with government officials of the country," McKain said.
He said Olivier Decamp, Director of EBRD Business Group for the Southern and Eastern Europe and Caucasus, will also arrive in Baku to attend the conference CAREC-2020.
As reported earlier, Haruhiko Kuroda, President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), will also visit Azerbaijan on November 23-25 to attend the ministerial conference.
CAREC activity over the past decade will be assessed and new strategy for the next decade will be presented at the conference.
Founded in 1997, the CAREC is a partnership of ten countries, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan and six multi-sided institutes: the ADB, the EBRD, the International Monetary Fund, the Islamic Bank for Development, the UN Development Program, and the World Bank.
Last time, Kuroda visited Azerbaijan in November 2008. The ADB has been the CAREC Secretariat since 2001.
The EBRD invested a total of $232 million in nine Azerbaijani projects in 2009. In 2010, the EBRD financed 13 projects worth $79 million. In 2011, the bank plans to approve $90 million to implement 14 projects.
The EBRD has invested 1.2 billion euros in Azerbaijan to implement 115 projects. The bank's current portfolio is 579.1 million euros. In Azerbaijan, 44 percents of the investments went to the energy sector and 23 percent went to corporate sector. A total of 70 projects were implemented in the financial sector. At the moment, the EBRD cooperates with nine banks, six micro-finance organizations, and three non-bank credit organizations of Azerbaijan.
EBRD is a bank which assets are used to establish democracy and market economy in 30 countries of Central Europe and Central Asia. It is owned by 61 countries and two international organizations, and has a portfolio of 579.1 million euros.