YEREVAN, April 4, /ARKA/. Armenia and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) have signed a €92.3 million loan agreement for the Armenia Green, Resilient and Inclusive Development Policy Operation project.
The loan was approved by the World Bank’s Board on March 24. The agreement was signed Armenian Finance Minister Vahe Hovhannisyan and World Bank Armenia Country Manager Caroline Geginat. The IBRD is a member of the World Bank Group.
The operation supports the 2021-26 Program of the Government of the Republic of Armenia and is aimed at promoting green, resilient, and inclusive development by: (i) improving the regulatory framework for environmental management to help Armenia mitigate and adapt to the pressures of climate change; (ii) enhancing equity and promoting human capital development; and (iii) supporting the anti-corruption framework and justice sector efficiency.
Key reforms supported under this operation are aligned with the World Bank’s Country Partnership Framework for 2019–23.
They include the reform of the public investment management framework to ensure systematic climate screening of public investments; revision of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Atmospheric Air Protection (AAP) laws; deployment of a new system for improved targeting of social assistance; modernization of the education curriculum, including for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and green education and revised laws on mediation and arbitration to enable greater efficiency in the functioning of the justice system.
This EUR 92.3 million (US$100 million equivalent) loan is an IBRD flexible loan with variable spread, with a 5-year grace period and a total repayment term of 19 years. This is the first operation in a programmatic series and is supported by parallel financing of EUR 50 million ($53.7 million) provided by the OPEC Fund for International Development, a multilateral development finance institution headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
Since joining the World Bank in 1992, commitments to Armenia have totaled around $2.53 billion. -0-
