The 18th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors (BOG) of the ECO Trade and Development Bank (ETDB) was held on July 04, 2019 at Istanbul, the Republic of Turkey. On invitation of ETDB, the ECO Secretary General, H.E. Dr. Hadi Soleimanpour, participated in the plenary session of the Meeting and delivered a statement.
The BOG of ETDB comprise of representatives appointed by the Governments of the Member States and holds annual meetings and such other meetings deemed necessary by the Board. All the power of the Bank is vested in the BOG. The BOG, inter alia has the power to increase or decrease the authorized capital of the Bank, elect the President of the Bank, approve, after reviewing the auditors’ report, the balance sheet and the statement of profit and loss of the Bank, determine the reserves and distribution of the profit of the Bank etc.
The 18th Meeting of BOG started with welcome remarks of the President of ETDB, H.E. Mr Javaid Aslam. The Chairman and Temporary Alternate Governor, Mr. Sultan Akhmatov inaugurated the Meeting and assured that the Board will make decisions to further promote the activities of the Bank for boosting the development of the economies of the Member States. Following the inauguration, the ECO Secretary General, H.E. Dr. Hadi Soleimanpour delivered his statement.
The ECO Secretary General, in his statement while congratulating the management of the Bank for financing the priority ECO projects and supporting financial needs of ECO Member States he underlined the need of promoting further of the existing cooperation between the Bank and Secretariat for supporting socio-economic development of the Member States.
Based on the outcomes of the last ECO Summit and Council of Ministers Meetings, he informed the Board that ECO among other things is focusing on implementation of regional priority projects of ECO Vision-2025, enhancing/improving the financial system of ECO and harmonizing the activities of the Secretariat with the ECO Regional Institutions /Specialized agencies including ECO Bank etc.
In continuation of his statement the Secretary General emphasized on the urgent need of i)-establishment of the ECO Vision Fund with collaboration of ECO Bank to finance the implementation of the priority projects, ii)-forming a mechanism to facilitate payment transactions for ECO trade and services and iii)-expansion of the mandate and capacity of the ECO Bank to rightly address the issues which ECO is focusing on.
Within the frame work of the cooperation between the two organizations the Secretary General also requested the BOG to consider finding ways and means of i)-providing loan to the Member States for implementation of joint ECO regional projects and ii) providing financial assistance for feasibility studies, capacity building projects and consultancy services to ECO projects.
He also highlighted the salient ECO Projects in the fields of Transport and Energy.
The ETDB was established on 3 August 2005 with its headquarters located at Istanbul, Turkey and started its operations in 2008. The representative offices of the Bank at Tehran, Iran and Karachi, Pakistan are fully functional. The current shareholders are now six members of ECO, namely Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan and Turkey.
The ETDB offers a range of medium-to-long term products i.e. project finance, corporate finance, trade finance and loans to support small and medium-sized enterprises directly or through financial intermediaries to private and state owned entities. In this context, sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, transport and communications, which have potential impact on the development of the member states, are given special attention.
