Today.Az » Business » ADB summarizes results of cooperation with Azerbaijan in 2019
21 January 2020 [12:15] - Today.Az


By Trend


In 2019 the Asian Development Bank (ADB) significantly increased the provision of its technical assistance and knowledge support to government agencies in Azerbaijan, ADB told Trend.

"The outgoing year was a special for our partnership. We marked its 20-year anniversary with number of events," said the Bank.

As the ADB said in summer the Azerbaijani government and the Bank endorsed the new Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) which outlines directions of cooperation for the next five years.

"The CPS’ overall objective is to support diversified and inclusive growth in Azerbaijan in line with the government’s strategic road maps," said ADB.

The CPS includes three strategic pillars: Boosting private sector development: 1) More sustainable and diverse non-oil private sector (e.g., improved business and investment climate environment; stronger micro, small, and medium enterprises; stronger value chains) 2) Deeper and more inclusive finance sector (e.g., stronger nonbank credit institutions, new financial instruments, capital market development, building up capabilities of financial intermediaries, effective risk-mitigation schemes); Raising Public Sector Efficiency: 1) Strengthened public resource management (e.g., fiscal rule on use of hydrocarbon revenues, medium-term expenditure framework, budget information management system, public procurement capacity, fiscal risk and public debt management, tax administration efficiency, enhancing social protection systems), 2) Increased efficiency and financial sustainability of state-owned enterprises; Improving Infrastructure and Strengthening Human Capital: 1) Better and more sustainable infrastructure to reduce cost of doing business and regional inequalities, and to support regional cooperation and integration; 2) Utility regulation and tariff reform; 3) More private sector participation in infrastructure; 4) Improved labor skills and productivity through better access and quality of technical and vocational education.

"In November ADB approved a $250 million policy-based loan in support of the government of Azerbaijan’s efforts to strengthen public sector governance and fiscal management, and encourage private sector development. Overall, this year can be assessed as another productive and fruitful year of our successful partnership," said ADB.

As the Bank said, since Azerbaijan joined ADB in 1999, ADB approved about $5.1 billion in sovereign and nonsovereign loans, guarantees, and technical assistance in various fields such as transport, energy, water supply and sanitation, public sector management, finance, agriculture and natural resources.

Of this amount, $1.9 billion went to energy, $1.4 billion – transport, $1 billion – public sector management, $583 million – water and other urban infrastructure and services, $214 million – finance, $1.2 million – agriculture, natural resources and rural development and $0.6 million – health. A total of 82 projects were supported in Azerbaijan by the ADB as of September 1, 2019.

"The priority areas of our cooperation are set in our Country Operational Business Plan (COBP) for 2020-2022. The COBP is the document which is being updated on annual basis. The updating process will start in early 2020 and new COBP will be finalized by summer," said ADB.

Azerbaijan, a group C developing member country, is eligible for regular ordinary capital resources (OCR) lending. The indicative resources available during 2020–2022 for sovereign operations total $820 million. Co-financing and funding from other sources, including the regular OCR regional cooperation and integration set-aside, will be explored.

During 2020–2022, ADB also expects to commit technical assistance (TA) amounting to $5.8 million to be financed from internal sources and supplemented, whenever feasible, by ADB-administered trust funds and other external sources.



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