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Qabil Ashirov

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Azerbaijan and the World Bank have been cooperating for a long time. Rolande Pryce, World Bank Country Director for the South Caucasus, told Azernews during the presentation conference of the World Bank Group held on the Azerbaijan Country Climate and Development Report.

She emphasised that both sides appreciate this cooperation highly.

“Azerbaijan is a shareholder of the World Bank and has been a beneficiary of World Bank lending, technical assistance, and knowledge for a very long time. I have been in this role only for three months, but all of the interactions that I have had with various senior leadership and ministers have been positive, and I am humbled to say that I had the opportunity to speak to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. They really underscore the importance of the bank's technical skills, something on which they rely, especially in meeting their development ambitions. So, even though we might not have had a lot of lending in recent years, we are still implementing the existing programs and doing quite a bit of analytical work. Country Climate and Development Reports, which is an example of that work,” Rolande Pryce said.

She also touched on the issue of suspicions over Azerbaijan’s ability to achieve targeted goals and noted that there are many ways to attain these goals for Azerbaijan. She noted that de-carbonization will emerge as new measures to grow the economy of the country.

“Absolutely, Azerbaijan can achieve the goals. Our report essentially says there are multiple ways that Azerbaijan can achieve its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) targets that it has set for itself. And what we have said is that there are opportunities in decarbonizing to accelerate the achievement of those goals. Azerbaijan's vision is ambitious, and essentially, what we would like to do is help the country achieve those goals in a shorter period of time. We believe that the climate action in Azerbaijan's path will open up new sources of growth for the country,” the director said.

She added that these misconceptions might relate to the current set of policies and investments. Therefore, they must be reviewed.

“I am not certain, but I can say that perhaps the reference relates to the current set of policies, and the current set of investments might not get steering a straight line. And what we are saying is, let's relook at those investments, let's relook at a piece of investment, a piece of reform, and the nature of these reforms. Once those are recalibrated, we not only see the opportunity to meet the targets, but we also figure that these targets can be met in a shorter period of time,” Rolande Pryce concluded.

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Qabil Ashirov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @g_Ashirov

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