15 May 2007
The EBRD Annual Meeting and Business Forum will be held 20-21 May 2007 in Kazan, Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation. One hot topic of conversation will be over the institution's profits.
In addition to the official meetings for delegates and the Business Forum, the EBRD is hosting an NGO Forum from 19-22 of May, which will include a series of meetings surrounding the Public Information Policy, the Environmental Policy Review, Energy and Infrastructure.
One hot topic of conversation will be the institution's profits, which has come under increased scrutiny. The Bank’s role is to promote development and improve standards of living in the countries in transition, not to act like, and compete with, profit-making commercial banks. Many feel that the EBRD should be embarrassed by its profits: they are the result of decisions by the Bank to pick the low-hanging fruit – relatively lucrative investment opportunities in middle income countries that could be financed by private financial institutions. Many groups monitoring the Bank feel that this is not the way to spend public funds. Rather, public money should be used to finance projects that are unlikely to be financed by the private sector, and which are likely to promote sustainable development and alleviate poverty.
For example, the EBRD seems particularly keen to fund oil, gas and other extractive industry projects. Given the high prices that these products command on world markets today, such projects are highly attractive to private lenders and could thus manage without the EBRD. The effect of EBRD lending for such projects is to encourage over dependence of some resource rich countries (eg., Russia, and the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus) on the exploitation of natural resources. EBRD financing of these projects also promotes global warming and other environmental problems. Many would prefer to see the Bank financing renewable energy technologies, which may be riskier from a profit-making perspective, but are more environmentally sound.
BIC will post updates on the meetings throughout the coming week.
For a complete agenda, please visit: