Azernews.Az

BAKU – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) financed 161 projects in the first six months of 2011, a record number for the first half of any year in the bank’s 20-year history and a clear indication of the strong demand for EBRD funding throughout the 29-country region where it invests, the bank’s head office said.

In volume terms, the EBRD invested a record 3.5 billion euros in the first half of this year, up slightly from the same period in 2010. The EBRD invested in 154 projects in the first half of 2010.

The EBRD’s investment activities amounted to about 1 billion euros each in the areas of industry, commerce, and agribusiness; financial institutions; and power, energy, and natural resources. It invested approximately 600 million euros in transport and municipal infrastructure.

Energy efficiency and climate change related investments reached 1.2 billion euros, an almost 50% increase over the same period in 2010.

Commenting on the record level of investments, EBRD First Vice President Varel Freeman said: "The crisis is not over. The private sector has significant unmatched demand for finance for restructuring and to support growth in enterprises during the recovery period."

"The EBRD is committed to supporting our region during this period," Freeman said. First half investments were targeted at the areas where financing is most acutely needed but well balanced throughout the region, he added.

The bank said it continued to place a high priority on its investments in the Western Balkans and its early transition countries, primarily the least advanced countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

In the Western Balkans, the bank financed 23 projects, up by more than a third compared to the first half of 2010. In the early transition countries the bank invested in 51 projects, an increase of 5 compared with the same period in 2010. Russia, with 1 billion euros of investment, remained the EBRD’s largest Country of Operations.

Freeman added that EBRD continues to face strong demand from its private sector clients, and is likely to finish the year with a total business volume approaching 9 billion euros.

"The EBRD is committed to supporting the transition to market economy in its existing Countries of Operations stretching from Central Europe and the Western Balkans to Central Asia. This support will not diminish as our shareholders consider the expansion of our activities to the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean area," he said.

The EBRD, owned by 61 countries and two intergovernmental institutions, is supporting the development of market economies and democracies in countries from central Europe to central Asia.