The Azerbaijani government and the World Bank (WB) started discussion on restructuring of the loan within the WBs second project Institution Building Technical Assistance (IBTA-2). Saved $5.14m is planned to be directed to the struggle with bird flu, the project implementation unit told Trend. Though the Azerbaijani government made a decision to return the saved money to the bank, it changed its mind in relation to the outbreak of epidemic.
Azerbaijan received agreement from WB. At present the sides discuss whether to prepare separate project or include additional component to IBTA-2, where the Azerbaijani Agriculture Ministry will be a beneficiary. The last version is more acceptable in the view of time frame. If it is adopted, the project implementation period will be prolonged by 1.5 or 2 years (the current is up on 30 June 2006).
$5.5m is used from $10.6m (7.47m SDR), allocated within the IBTA-2 project.
Д°BTA-2 was approved in 2002. It covered 4 components from envisaged 10. These components concern strengthening of state financial management, control over state financial expenses, reformation of social expenses and project management. Besides, new component on strengthening of institution potential through improvement of legislation in business accounting and audit was included into the project at the expense of the saved funds.