OREANDA-NEWS. December 08, 2009. Belarus and the World Bank have signed a development policy loan (DPL) agreement. The document was inked by Belarus Finance Minister Andrei Kharkovets and World Bank Country Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova Martin Raiser, reported the Official website government.by.

Martin Raiser said that the World Bank will transfer the loan to Belarus within the next few days.

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved the allocation of a US200 million DPL to Belarus on 1 December. In the next few days Belarus is supposed to get a US200 million development loan.

The World Bank will issue the loan in one tranche for 16 years, with the repayment of the loan postponed by six years as an option. The interest rate is considerably lower than the market rate.

The loan is allocated to support the government’s economic program aimed at addressing the social impact of the crisis and advancing the structural reforms to help enable a sustainable economic recovery.

The development loan supports a program of reforms built around two areas.

The first one aims to enhance social assistance programs by making them more targeted at the poor, who are likely to be the ones most suffering from the impact of the global economic and financial crisis on the Belarusian economy.

The second one supports the government’s liberalization program to promote investment and new jobs, including measures such as the decree to improve auditing practices with a view to lifting a significant burden from businesses, price liberalization measures (including the removal of restrictions of trade markups for most products), the gradual elimination of turnover taxes and the preparation of the legislative base to start privatization.