Friday, March 24 2017 14:36

ArmInfo. Between the Republic of Armenia and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (MBRD - the main credit institution of the World Bank) on March 23, a grant agreement for $ 1.8 million was signed under the "Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Assessment Capabilities Development Program".

As the press service of the Armenian Finance Ministry told ArmInfo, Armenian Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan signed the agreement from the Armenian side, and Laura Bailey, the head of the Armenian office, from the World Bank.

Grant funds are provided by Japan, acting as a donor, within the concession of the "Special Fund for Policy and Human Resource Development". The goal of the program is to strengthen the evaluation and monitoring capacities of the Agricultural Programs Implementation Office of the Armenian Ministry of Agriculture, providing the Office with the opportunity to analyze and develop the agricultural policy on the basis of facts. The program consists of two components:  "Developing Opportunities for Factual Analysis and Policy Development" and "Managing and administering the program, monitoring, evaluating and disseminating knowledge".

The head of the Armenian Ministry of Finance expressed satisfaction with the cooperation with the Armenian office of the World Bank. "The grand funds, in general, will be directed on agriculture development and the most important, development of the possibilities of Agriculture Ministry", stated Vardan Aramyan.

According to Laura Bailey, the government of Armenia has a long years cooperation with World Bank.  "Today we signed an extremely important grunt agreement, which, we are sure, will assist greatly the overcoming the problems in agriculture", she stated.

Since 1992, Armenia is a member of the World Bank and since 1993 - International Development Association (IDA). During this period, $2.3 billion was allocated to the Republic in the form of loans and grunts.