Odile Renaud-Basso: “This is the time to press on – together”

Your Excellencies, thanks

Governors,

Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the EBRD’s 2024 Annual Meeting and Business Forum.

And welcome to Yerevan, a city with nearly 3,000 years of history to its name already.

The theme of this year’s event is ‘Delivering Impact Together’.

This city and this country show what that means.

Our total investment in Armenia to date is already over 2 billion euros.

And we expect the 2024 figure to break new ground – and be significantly higher than in the past.

That strong performance is a tribute to our partners in government, the Central Bank and the private sector, as well as our work with the Investment Council of Armenia…

And Yerevan itself, one of the very first members of our Green Cities programme.

This Annual Meeting and Business Forum and its success are also testament to the hard work and generous hospitality of our hosts – for which many thanks.

We are indeed ‘delivering impact together’ across all our regions.

That work is even more important amidst today’s severe challenges.

Our regions are at the heart of the very high levels of geopolitical tension we are living through.

Growth is fitful and, in many places, peace under threat.

We can all see how, politically and economically, the world is fragmenting.

Some basic principles underpinning international cooperation since the end of the Cold War are being questioned.

In this dangerous new era, the EBRD and what we do become ever more crucial.

Our global membership allows us to be both an anchor of stability in today’s stormy seas and a bridge between North and South, and East and West.

Our impact on the ground helps countries weather global crises, including, unfortunately, the consequences of conflict.

Only last autumn Armenia had to welcome 100,000 refugees, an emergency it coped with with impressive speed.
And the Bank is assisting with its Refugee Response Plan, helping ensure access to finance for those displaced, protecting livelihoods and supporting infrastructure.

The ongoing fighting, loss of civilian life and devastating destruction in the Middle East are a source of great pain and distress.
We are playing our part to help. The EBRD was the first IFI to provide a funding package to the West Bank’s private sector, which is key for economic stability, after the events of last October.

And we stand ready to do much more when reconstruction in Gaza begins.

And Russia continues to wage a terrible war of aggression against Ukraine, occupying its territory, bombing civilians, and trying to destroy its infrastructure.
After more than two years of massive destruction and loss of life, the resilience of the Ukrainian people remains remarkable.

Our duty, our moral duty, is to continue to back their bravery.

Our deployment of over 4 billion euros in Ukraine and its economy since 2022 has boosted its private sector and the country’s resilience.

Our work on energy security, infrastructure, food security and trade is making a real difference to people’s lives and livelihoods.

We are very grateful for all the support you, our donors, gave us to help make that happen.

The capital increase you, our Shareholders, agreed to at the end of last year will equip the Bank to navigate these very turbulent times - and to grow bigger.

It will enable us to keep investing in wartime Ukraine at current levels...

And help provide significantly more funds for reconstruction when peace returns.

But it also supports the Bank’s activity in all our regions, many of which have been affected, directly and indirectly, by these wars.

That capital increase – and the speed with which we, as an institution, prepared the case for it and you provided approval – was one of the signal achievements of the last 12 months…

And a symbol of multilateralism at its best.

But there were many operational highlights over the last year:

Record investment volume and number of projects,

Record green financing,

Record support for the private sector,

Record disbursements,

And a record number of projects with a gender component.

We also mobilised a record 26.2 billion euros of additional private sector finance…

More is needed and we will focus on scaling up the levels of investment from all sources we unlock.

And the Bank’s financial results rebounded last year from the initial adverse impact of the war on Ukraine to return a very healthy profit of 2.1 billion euros.

With our three key strategic priorities we also helped our countries to deal with global challenges.

The climate crisis is accelerating and already taking a toll on our countries through droughts and floods.

That is why we are so focused on deepening our support for the Green Transition.

For example, we were instrumental in the launch of North Macedonia’s platform to phase out coal-fired electricity and deploy 1.7 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030.

Promoting human capital resilience and equality of opportunity by protecting jobs, livelihoods, people and communities has never been as important as now.

I am particularly proud of the way we are helping our Ukrainian clients integrate veterans into the labour force.

Only last month, together with the National Bank of Ukraine, we launched a new initiative to enable veterans to access finance and find jobs.

And we have built up our work in the digital sphere, boosting the number of projects in this area by almost a third over the last year.

We have indeed delivered impact across the themes of Green, equality of opportunity and digital you asked us to prioritise in the current Strategic and Capital Framework.

We have also proved ourselves highly adaptable and agile.

In the face of the shocks of war and natural disasters, such as earthquakes in Türkiye and Morocco, we have had to.

Our thoughts are now turning to the future, and the next SCF period.

We already know that, thanks to your vision and support, the Bank will take its unique business model to Sub-Saharan Africa – with Benin already a new shareholder - and Iraq - another of our new members.

This launches a very exciting new chapter for the EBRD.

Our focus on building open market economies attractive to private sector investment is the right one for our new frontiers as well as our existing regions.

We also know that the global context in which we will be operating will be tough.

Many of our countries will benefit from new supply chains, the shift to renewables and the world’s growing reliance on critical raw materials.

But the transition and development challenges remain daunting.

And the world needs a stepchange in the flow of capital to our markets if it is to meet them.

We are already delivering impact together with our partners.

I believe we can do even more as our internal transformation agenda helps us grow increasingly agile and efficient…

And our culture encourages further innovation and engagement.

Let me finish by saying this.

The world around us is as volatile now as any of us can remember.

Much will be at stake in the years ahead.

Some may be tempted to turn in on themselves; but that would leave us divided, undermining our cause.

For those who believe in multilateralism and want to accelerate our transition to a more sustainable world, this is the time to press on - together.

The MDBs know that full well.

We are increasingly pooling our forces; and operating more and more as one system.

The future will be challenging.

It will certainly be exciting.

What we do really will build a better future for our regions and for our children.

Delivering more impact,

Transforming economies and lives,

And doing so together.

This is what we will continue to strive for.

Thank you.