The Belarusian Finance Ministry sees a lot of promise in interaction with funds registered in Persian Gulf countries, BelTA learned from an article by Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Belkovets in the Finance. Accounting. Auditing magazine.
Belarus closely cooperates with the World Bank and various European structures – the EBRD, the European Investment Bank, and the Nordic Investment Bank. According to the Finance Ministry, cooperation with these bodies is profitable: they provide long-term loans on quite attractive terms. But just like any other bank in the world there is a certain limit to how much they can lend to one borrower.
Andrei Belkovets said: “As investments in our country rise, financing opportunities grow smaller. We come to understand the need to find new sources of preferential resources. In this context interaction with financial funds registered in Persian Gulf countries looks promising.”
The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, the Saudi Fund for Development, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, the OPEC Fund for International Development, the Islamic Development Bank, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) operate in Persian Gulf countries. The funds practice certain approaches to lending: their share in a project cannot go beyond 50%, the loan term cannot exceed 25 years, the interest rate does not exceed 6% per annum and depends on income per capita (the poorest countries get money on the most preferential terms). The mandate of most of the funds is not limited to Arab countries, they finance projects all over the globe.
Belarus has already cooperated with the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development in the past. An agreement on a loan for reconstructing a polyester thread factory in Svetlogorsk was signed in 2002. Cooperation was on pause after that, but in 2018 work began to consider using money of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development for reconstructing a set of buildings of the Grodno oncology early treatment clinic.
An assessment mission of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development worked in Belarus on 21 April – 1 May 2019. Terms of the loan were agreed as a result. The fund will participate in financing the project by allocating a preferential loan to the tune of 7.5 million Kuwaiti dinars (the equivalent of $25.5 million) for a period of 24 years.
“Considering the friendly relations Belarus has established with a number of Middle East countries, we have a real opportunity to expand the circle of partners and get additional sources of cheap credit resources,” Andrei Belkovets concluded.
