Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe TD has been unanimously elected Chair of the Board of Governors of the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) for 2020-21 by fellow Finance Ministers from the Bank’s sixty-eight member countries.
Minister Donohoe is the third Irish person to hold this role since the EBRD was established in 1991 to help develop and grow the private sector in former Warsaw Pact and Soviet countries. Since then, the Bank has greatly extended its operations into North Africa and Asia.
The main business of the Annual Meeting, during which Minister Donohoe was elected as Chair of the Board of Governors, was to consider and approve the Bank’s Strategic and Capital Framework 2021-2025, which will guide it over that period against a backdrop of Covid which has exacerbated existing economic problems in a large number of member countries.
In response, the EBRD provided a €10bn Covid-19 Solidarity Package for this year to new and existing clients in its countries of operation covering short-term liquidity, working capital, trade finance and restructuring. This was done as a swift and measured response to emerging local needs through targeted and tailored investments guided by host authorities. Further assistance is under consideration depending on the progress of the pandemic in the coming months and the pressures on businesses.
The EBRD’s Annual Meeting, which was held on a virtual basis because of Covid, also selected a new President Ms Odile Renaud-Basso, a French citizen, for a four-year term.
In response to his election, Minister Donohoe said: ‘I am very pleased that my fellow Finance Ministers from the sixty-eight member countries of the EBRD have elected me as to Chair its Board of Governors over the 2020-21 period. I look forward to working with the Bank’s new President Ms Renaud-Basso as she progresses its 2021- 25 Strategic and Capital Framework against the backdrop of Covid which has exacerbated existing economic difficulties across the EBRD’s countries of operation in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and North Africa’.
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