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EBRD appeals to members for extra $10 billion for crisis

29 September 2009 10:01 (UTC +04:00)

Baku -APA-Economics. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has appealed to member states for an extra 10 billion euros to lift its capital following the global financial crisis, a newspaper said Tuesday.
The EBRD has requested the money to offset the impact of the crisis on central and eastern Europe, the Financial Times said.
The London-based bank wants to expand its lending and compensate for a sharp drop in private capital flows into the ex-Soviet bloc, the FT said.
In a letter to shareholders, EBRD president Thomas Mirow warns that while the region’s economies "have begun to stabilise," it would be "premature to say that a general turnaround has begun."
"The crisis will have lasting repercussions," said the letter, seen by the newspaper.
The appeal comes after the bank said this month it would hike its investment in the former Soviet bloc to eight billion euros (11.69 billion dollars) this year because of the global crisis.
Mirow appeals to the bank’s shareholder governments to remember the 20th anniversary this year of the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The region deserves "broad support" in continuing "its mutually beneficial integration into the European and world economies," the letter said.
The EBRD was formed in 1991 to help former communist nations adopt market economies after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The EBRD is owned by 61 governments as well as the European Commission and the European Investment Bank. It posted a record annual loss of 602 million euros in 2008 amid the worst global slump since the 1930s. Source: AFP