Couchepin attends key bank meeting

Pascal Couchepin is representing Switzerland at the EBRD swissinfo.ch

The Swiss economics minister, Pascal Couchepin, is in London to represent Switzerland at the 10th anniversary of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The meeting, which lasts from Sunday to Tuesday, will focus on the bank’s continuing role in the transition process in eastern Europe and in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Member states will also examine the capital resources of the bank, as is required every five years.

The EBRD, which was created in 1991 less than two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, finances projects in central and east European countries, as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States, which promote the transition towards a market economy.

With help from strategic private investors, the bank has over the past 10 years mobilised about $12 billion (SFr20.41 billion) of foreign investment for the region, a figure that represents about nine per cent of all foreign investment made.

The bank made a profit last year after provisions of €152.8 million (SFr234.24 million), which is considered a vast improvement over 1998 when its figures went into the red following the Russian financial crisis.

As a founding member of the bank, Switzerland has a permanent seat on the board of directors. The executive director, Laurent Guye, heads a voting group that includes Liechtenstein, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and the Republic of Yugoslavia.

On Thursday, Couchepin will be in Washington with the finance minister, Kaspar Villiger, for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Switzerland is represented in the World Bank by an executive director. He heads a voting group that includes Poland, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

The group controls nearly three per cent of all votes, which ranks the Swiss group 17th among the 24 groups of countries represented on the board of directors of the World Bank.

swissinfo with agencies