First Vice President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Jürgen Rigterink recently paid a visit to Armenia. In an exclusive interview on September 23, to Banks.am Rigterink talks about the process of productive Armenia-EBRD cooperation and new plans. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
You have served as First Vice President at EBRD since 2018. How do you assess cooperation with Armenia in both public and private sectors over that period?
As you might know, we have invested so far €1.3 billion or a little bit over that in Armenia and this year we actually will be adding again to that. We expect to sign up to maybe over €100 million at the end of the year. Only this morning, I was very fortunate to sign two transactions. The first one is Amber Capital EU-Armenia SME Fund which is not only important for improving the private equity industry but also capital markets-related. The other one was on the energy side: we signed the third tranche with EA energy network of Armenia, so that shows that we continue to invest.
EBRD provides loans to certain Armenian banks for lending to small businesses with the purpose to increase energy efficiency in Armenia. Where is Armenia in terms of adherence to EBRD Green Economy Transition approach and what joint efforts still should be made in this area?
It is a question we rarely get. The economy is going through certain phases. When you look at the general energy production, we’re just at the start of making Armenia a greener economy. This is also why it’s so important that before the end of this year we actually will sign and finance the largest solar project, a solar power plant with an installed capacity of 55 MWac. The investment is roughly US$ 55 million in total and maybe 15 or 17 million or something like that we will allocate before the end of the year. That’s related to the first start of greening the economy. But for greening the economy you can not only produce greener electricity, but you can also reduce current electricity consumption. We do not have the networks and the clients and the contacts, so this is why we try to use banks for this kind of programs.
Which areas of cooperation with Armenia will EBRD focus on in the next 5 years?
We would like to continue to invest in the banking side, but also on the energy side, I mentioned. We would like to see more of the renewable energy side, also update energy efficiency, agriculture, ICT and manufacturing. And, as I mentioned, also try to engage more with the government on larger infrastructure projects.
Banks.am journalist Gayane Yenokyan interviewed Jürgen Rigterink. The full interview is available at Banks.am.
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