Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

The World Bank is interested in cooperation with Azerbaijan in the fields of broadband Internet, cyber security and e-government, a WB official said in Baku on June 24.

Randeep Sudan, the Sector Manager for Information and Communication Technologies at the World Bank, was addressing a meeting at the Azerbaijani Communications and Information Technologies Ministry which was joined by heads of departments, bodies and enterprises of the Ministry.

Sudan noted the rapid development of Azerbaijan's ICT sector and spoke about the WB's ongoing ICT projects, highlighting the WB experience in this field.

"We believe that the projects implemented in Azerbaijan in these fields deserve attention, and we are interested in cooperation," he said.

In turn, Bakhtiyar Mammadov, head of Law and HR Department at the Ministry, spoke about ICT projects, particularly the comprehensive measures to establish e-government and digitize government services.

The heads of the ICT Ministry's associations and enterprises spoke of their ongoing work and discussed the opportunities for cooperation with the World Bank.

As of January 1, 2013, Azerbaijan held talks with the World Bank under 56 projects on financing credit agreements totaling over $3.122 billion.

At present, the implementation of 36 projects worth $894.1 million is complete, and currently the execution of 20 projects worth more than $2.228 billion is underway.

As of January 2013, WB loans in the amount of over $1.714 billion, constituting 54.5 percent of the total amount of the attracted credits, were used. In 2012, Azerbaijan spent $393.4 million from the allocated funds.

In addition to these credits, the World Bank allocated 44 grants totaling $41.37 million for Azerbaijan in 1995-2012.