A senior official at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said the EBRD started to provide Jordan with an emergency package as early as spring last year to mitigate COVID pandemic impacts on the national economy.
Managing Director for the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) region at the EBRD, Heike Harmgart, told the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that the EBRD will continue helping Jordan’s private sector to be more flexible in terms of restructuring the loans to give it more time to pay back.
“We have started a vital infrastructure support facility, which is also a COVID response facility for infrastructure, such as extending some emergency funding for the National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) to maintain its working capital. We also continue to look at what we can do to help the greater Amman municipality, to help the transport sector through the crisis,” Harmgart said.
Harmgart, who is currently visiting Amman, accompanied by an EBRD team, said the visit focuses on supporting Jordan’s economic recovery efforts and working with different sectors of the Jordanian economy to come out of the crisis.
“We’re talking to local banks to help them with green financing for small and medium enterprises,” Harmgart added. “We’re talking, to the Greater Amman Municipality, NEPCO, to the energy sector to see what we can do on the infrastructure to support more green investments, including desalination, energy efficiency, solar and wind energy.”
“We also stand ready to support many dimensions for Jordan, including the green economy and women’s empowerment, which were focused on during the work team’s meetings with some Jordanian banks recently,” Harmgart noted.
She explained that the real focus of this visit is on helping Jordan become more energy efficient through investing in the green economy, which is a “is a win-win deal”, especially in reducing production costs on companies, helping the state to provide water and electricity, and also ensuring that citizens have access to affordable electricity through solar, wind and water technology.
Source: Jordan News Agency