OREANDA-NEWS. January 28, 2010. Adalyat Muradov, the head of the MED Department of Forecasting & Economic Policy Analysis, says that CPS will be prepared already this year.

“We will submit the draft of the new strategy with WBG already in June 2010,” Muradov said.

At the same time the Azerbaijani government informed that the Azerbaijani party plans to coordinate with the Bank the strategic directions of partnership only for two years ahead, not for four years as it was expected.

On 19-21 January 2010, WB regional director Assad Alam and a range of Bank’s sector directors conducted preliminary consultations within the framework of development of CPS for 2011-14.

Partners for consultations were heads of the Ministries of Finance and of Economic Development, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. A pilot version of strategy can be proposed in the next one or two months.

Earlier, the Azerbaijani government entrusted the ministries, institutions and the CBA in connection with analysis and prepare offers on cooperation with WB. They had to appraise necessity of cooperation, define priorities of such cooperation and to offer relevant projects. The Bank initially planned to speed up work over CPS in 2010.

Azerbaijan has been a WBG member since 1992. By the present WBG has given loans for US 2.506 bn to Azerbaijan for 47 projects.

In 2008, CPS extra funding made US 600 million per year or US 1.2 bn for the term of two years until the strategy expired. Extra financing from the bank also totaled US 1.26 bn, allocated to 1st July 2008.