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IBRD conducts periodical review of its project portfolio in Romania
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) on Tuesday conducted a periodical review of the performance of its project portfolio in Romania, the Romanian Finance Ministry reports in a press release.
There are currently 11 active projects being carried out in Romania by the IBRD, worth 1.148 billion euros in all, to which a 1-billion-euro development policy loan with a drawdown option programme was recently added.
'Although Romania is a member state of the European Union, the World Bank is still a strategic partner to Romania. There is no contradiction between the EU membership and capitalising on the partnerships with international financial institutions. Over the past years, the substance of Romania's partnership with the World Bank has dramatically changed. From project funding, it moved on to programme funding and now to loans with a drawdown option,' State Secretary with the Finance Ministry Claudiu Doltu is quoted as saying in the release.
Doltu underscored that this is no competition among various funding sources to spend money in an austere fiscal environment, and the added value of the partnership with the World Bank resides in technical assistance and expertise for public administration reform and improving Romania's capacity to absorb European structural and cohesion funds.
'Romania is exploring, jointly with the World Bank, the possibility to identify long-term economic growth sources in Romania, to design and manage structural reforms, to develop a strategy for an integrated use of information resources, and even to develop projects supporting agriculture in terms of rural development and social inclusion. The added value of the partnership with the World Bank exceeds by far the value of the loans per se, and we want it to reflect particularly in increased capacity of Romania's public administration that would lead to reduced business costs and from there to economic growth that will benefit as many people as possible to as great an extent as possible,' Doltu also said.