YEREVAN, June 27./ARKA/. The Board of the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) approved the bank’s strategy for 2013-2017 at its regular meeting in Moscow a day before.

Finance Minister of Armenia David Sargsyan and his counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia attended the meeting, the bank reported to ARKA on Thursday.

To comply with its new strategy, the bank will concentrate on financing the projects targeted at development of energy, transport and municipal infrastructures in the member states, improvement of energy efficiency of the economies. The latter is planned to be reached through reducing power consumptio of enterprises and raising resource conservation.

The bank will also focus on supporting the projects which expand commercial and economic ties and mutual investments.

EDB President Igor Finogenov has noted the strategy for 2011-2013 has been fulfilled earlier than defined, the investment portfolio has hit 4.6 billion USD by the end of 2012, the current investment portfolio stands at 3.67 billion USD.

“Our investment portfolio has a potential for generating commerce between the EDB member states at 1.6 billion USD a year. It made mutual investments in the projects at 1.6 billion USD. According to our assessments, the bank’s projects have opened 18,000 new job places and refilled the budgets of the member states by 588 million USD a year in taxes,” he said.

The new strategy period is five instead of three years, Finogenov mentioned.

“It will allow us to pay special attention to realizing long-term tasks and reduce the impact of volatility of the financial markets on the Bank’s performance,” he noted.

Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) is an international financial organization established by Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006 to help develop market economies and boost mutual trade ties in member states. The bank’s authorized stock is over 1.5bln US dollars. The member-states are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. —0-