IDB grants loan for rural housing construction in Uzbekistan

By Aynur Jafarova

The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has granted a loan worth $100 million to Uzbekistan.

A relevant agreement was signed between the Uzbek government and the management of the bank during a round table on the country's cooperation with member-organizations of the Arab Coordination Group in Tashkent, the IDB representative office in Tashkent told Trend Agency on November 3.

The loan has been given for rural housing construction in the central Asian country.

"The loan, approved by the IDB Board of Executive Directors in August 2014, was delivered on "istisna" conditions for a period of 17 years with a two-year grace period," a statement said.

Uzbekistan has recently approved a rural housing construction development program worth $2.2 billion up to 2015.

The program envisages the construction of 41,400 buildings with a total living space of about six million square meters in the country's regions.

In particular, around 11,000 individual houses are planned to be built in rural areas of Uzbekistan in 2014. Some ADB borrowed funds worth $100 million were given by the bank as part of the second tranche of the multi- tranche financing of the rural housing construction program worth $500 million. Meanwhile, special credit lines of the Finance Ministry in the national currency, refinanced through domestic banks have been transferred for the housing construction this year.

Around 10,000 houses were built in Uzbekistan in 2013, including 8,510 - by ADB loan, 1,490 - preferential mortgage loans of local banks and a targeted credit line of the Finance Ministry.

Uzbekistan has been a member of the IDB since 2003. The bank participates in the co-financing of projects in the areas of health, education, agriculture, irrigation, power engineering, transport and private entrepreneurship support.

Currently, the total amount of credit funds and investments of the bank in 38 projects in Uzbekistan's economy is over $1 billion.