Azerbaijan, Baku, 18 February / Trend corr. I.Khalilova / Christian Petersen, the leading WB economist, will make a another visit to Azerbaijan to continue work on the report regarding the implementation of the WB assistant strategy to Azerbaijan for 2007-2010, WB Baku representative reported. The first visit to supervise the implementation of a three-year assistant strategy took place last week.
"The project of the report will be discussed with the government of Azerbaijan, and the table of the new projects will be prepared for the next two years," a government source stated.
An indicative amount will be shown to finance them, to which Azerbaijan will have an access in 2009-2010, but it does not mean that the Country is likely to fully utilize them. The necessity to allocate additional funds appeared due to the premature use of funds in the last two years. The current strategy is assessed at $1.26bln.
Despite this, the bank does not consider it necessary to renew the program and again approve it in the WB Board of Directors.
Presently, the work is being carried out on 12 projects, the financing of which will allow assimilating the quota. Of them, six projects will be financed on privilege conditions to the amount of $131mln from the International Development Association (IDA).
The privilege financing covers the improvement of social conditions of internally displaced persons, agricultural investments, modernization of financial sector, CAPSAP, reformation of educational system and providing social aid.
Another six projects (development of transport and trade through railroad, reconstruction of the highway, improvement of the water system and the clean-up of the environment) will be financed through the International Reconstruction and Development Bank (IRDB). Furthermore, additional funds may be allocated for the water project through IDA.
Under the new WB assistant program, Azerbaijan will have access only to the bank's commerce resources.
