At an investor session for Jordan held on 10 May during the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s annual meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus, the bank’s regional head for the southern and eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) revealed that the EBRD’s board of governors will now sanction investments in the West Bank and Gaza.
The West Bank and Gaza will join the current EBRD investment territories of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunis. Janet Heckman, managing director of the SEMED region for the EBRD, said: “This afternoon the Governors will approve opening in the West Bank and we hope that later in the year we will be opening in Lebanon.”
The EBRD has provided €4.8 billion to 120 projects in the form of loans and equity in the four countries with 80 percent of these investments made in the private sector.
Heckman said that the EBRD’s Jordan office in Amman will act as a hub for the expanded regional investment.
As well as growing its operations from the office in Jordan, the EBRD has announced that Jordan will host next year’s Annual Meeting. Heike Harmgart, head of the EBRD office in Jordan, said that it has become a poster country for some of the key transitional elements of the bank’s programmes.
“As our president said, the EBRD is moving toward having 40 percent of its investments in the green economy but Jordan already has 70 percent of our investments in the green economy,” said Harmgart. “Jordan is a great example of setting the right standards in terms of public-private partnerships and having agreements in the private sector where the risks are rightly allocated and incentivising us, as financial institutions, to put our money where our mouth is.”
According to Imad Fakhoury, Jordan’s minister for planning and international cooperation, over the past ten years the country has packaged over US$10 billion in infrastructure developments including for public-private partnerships (PPPs) in water, energy and transport.
“At the IMF World Bank Spring meetings, Jordan was ranked as the highest country in the world relative to its size of population or economy to have such a large amount of PPP projects,” said Fakhoury.
One investor has been Norway’s Scatec Solar. “What is impressive is that your government shows a willingness to find solutions,” said Terje Osmundsen, senior vice-president, Scatec Solar during today’s panel session. “The experience of Jordan in this area can show Egypt and other markets what to do in this area. Your country will be able to update the grid with better storage, batteries and a smart grid. The lessons learned will make it possible for Jordan to reap the benefits.”
Scatec Solar’s first solar plant, the 10 MW Oryx project , came into operation in Jordan in June 2016 with two more plants set to follow. The three projects , which will have a total capacity of 42 MW, received US$ 100 million in debt financing from the EBRD and Proparco, the French development finance institution.