The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have made major investments in the countries of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Since 1995, BIC’s Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Program has been working to improve the lending policies of IFIs in the region and to ensure that the projects they finance serve the interests of local populations.
BIC’s work in the region focuses on the activities of the World Bank Group, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); the Asian Development Bank; and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
These multilateral development banks have invested more than $64 billion in the countries most closely monitored by BIC – Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Russia is by far the leading recipient of IFI funds in the region, accounting for 75% of those investments. Although BIC devotes the majority of its resources to these six countries, IFI activities in other parts of the region remain important. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, for example, possess substantial natural resource deposits and host several oil and gas pipelines. Despite Uzbekistan’s political situation, it has managed to maintain IFI operations, receiving over $2.4 billion from the IFC, EBRD, World Bank, and ADB since the early 1990’s. Nevertheless, much of this financing came early in Uzbekistan’s transition, and relatively little has been done in recent years. Turkmenistan’s disengagement from the international community has been more pronounced. It has accepted only slightly more than $200 million in IFI assistance. Tajikistan, the other significant Central Asian nation, has received around $900 million in IFI loans and grants, excluding IMF aid. However, Tajikistan, the poorest country of the former Soviet republics, lacks its neighbors’ resource wealth and has yet to fully recover from its devastating civil war in the 1990’s.
BIC's ECA Program emphasizes measures to improve the transparency of revenues and investment contracts in extractive industries financed by the IFIs and to minimize the adverse environmental and social consequences of such projects. A major focus of the ECA Program’s work in the region is building capacity among local civil society organizations to participate more fully in decision making on IFI activities.
Strengthening Local Civil Society Capacity on IFIs and the Power Sector in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
The project aims to strengthen the capacity of civil society groups in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in understanding and influencing the World Bank and other international financial institutions (IFIs) involvement in their countries, including technical assistance, policy advice and project lending with focus on the hydroelectric sector. It aims to promote transparency and accountability in IFI involvement in the hydro-sector.
*All data from the World Bank, IFC, EBRD, ADB, and IMF, as of the end of 2007 and mid-2008.