OREANDA-NEWS. February 12, 2010. WB country manager for Azerbaijan Gregory T.Jedrzeiczak said that they advanced very constructively and after negotiations two weeks ago expected to present in a month the Draft CPS for discussion of intergovernmental organizations and the press.

“In parallel, we want from the government to indicate priority projects for 2 years and CPS term will be 4 years. Both processes are conducted in parallel. I think that CPS budget will total around US 1 bn for 4 year but in fact the sum will depend on program realization. We with the government have an idea to continue successful projects (highway, rural, etc) within the new CPS where we already have good results,” he said.

On 19-21 January WB regional director Assad Alam and a range of Bank’s sector directors conducted preliminary consultations within the framework of development of CPS for 2011-14.
Partners for consultations were heads of the Ministries of Finance and of Economic Development, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. A pilot version of strategy can be proposed in the next one or two months.

Earlier, the Azerbaijani government entrusted the ministries, institutions and the CBA in connection with analysis and prepare offers on cooperation with WB. They had to appraise necessity of cooperation, define priorities of such cooperation and to offer relevant projects. The Bank initially planned to speed up work over CPS in 2010.

Azerbaijan has been a WBG member since 1992. By the present WBG has given loans for US 2.506 bn to Azerbaijan for 47 projects.

In 2008, CPS extra funding made US 600 million per year or US 1.2 bn for the term of two years until the strategy expired. Extra financing from the bank also totaled US1.26 bn, allocated to 1st July 2008.