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World Bankâ€™s new Director for South Caucasus introduced to Azerbaijani government

02 February 2009 17:33 (UTC +04:00)

Shigeo Katsu said Asad Alam officially took the office on January 15 and was controlling the work in the region from the main office in Washington. Asad ALam will move to the WB office in Tbilisi within a month or two.
â€œThe aim of our visit to Azerbaijan is to accompany Donna Dowsett-Coirolo, who had been regional director and retired, and introduce Asad Alam to the government. We held meetings with a number of government agencies and had discussions about the economic growth of the republic,â€ vice-president said.
Touching upon the worldâ€™s financial crisis, Katsu said the situation in Azerbaijan was better than other countries in this respect. Nevertheless, development perspectives for 2009 are reviewed again. However, the World Bank official spoke about some positive sides of the financial crisis: â€œCrisis creates certain positive opportunities. Thus, one can develop the non-oil sector, new jobs can be established as well as business environment and financial management of a state can be improved as wellâ€.
Donna Dowsett-Coirolo in return expressed satisfaction with mutual relations and cooperation during her tenure in Azerbaijan. This is my final official visit. We succeeded to carry out a number of successful projects. I hope the activity of Asad Alam would be productive in Azerbaijan.
Asad Alam expressed his confidence that new projects would be implemented together with Azerbaijan.
It should be reminded that Azerbaijan has been cooperation with the World Bank since 1992. The bank has allocated USD 2 billion for the implementation of 45 projects in Azerbaijan within this period.