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EBRD and Switzerland establish framework for cooperation
Boosting investments in Central Asia and Caucasus is a Swiss priority
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Switzerland are to strengthen their collaboration and strategic dialogue as part of an effort to optimise the already extensive Swiss contribution to the Bank’s programmes.
Switzerland is one of the EBRD’s key bilateral donors of technical cooperation and investment grant funds, said Noreen Doyle, the Bank’s First Vice President. It has contributed more than €15 million in grants used primarily to finance consultancy work on EBRD projects, and about €133 million in investment grant funds underpinning the financial viability and transition impact of more than 20 Bank projects. Its contributions have also supported such crucial initiatives as the Bank’s three nuclear safety funds.
A memorandum of understanding signed between EBRD and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) sets up a framework for regular consultations aimed at identifying common priorities, including how to increase investments in the Central Asia and the Caucasus.
The institutional dialogue will cover the full range of cooperation projects between Switzerland and the Bank, including identifying those factors that have contributed to success, as well as those that been the cause of failure, so that future initiatives can benefit from the experience acquired, said the EBRD’s alternate Governor for Switzerland, Ambassador Oscar Knapp.
Switzerland has been one of the leading supporters of the EBRD’s micro-finance efforts and was the first country to back the Bank’s Central Asia Risk Sharing Special Fund.
Swiss support has been mainly directed to so-called early transition countries in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
On the board of the Bank, the Swiss Director also represents the interests of five of the EBRD’s 27 countries of operations: Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
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