STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- World Bank approves four Bosnia loans worth $90 mln SARAJEVO, June 28 (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Thursday it has approved four loans for Bosnia worth a total of $89.8 million, including a $35 million one for a long-delayed power sector restructuring project. The credits would support poverty alleviation, community development efforts, privatisation of some state utilities and repairs to the electricity transmission system to restore power distribution to pre-war levels, the bank said in a statement. The projects will be added to the 16 already active, it said, adding that the bank has invested in Bosnia some $770 million in 36 projects worth a total of $1.9 billion since the end of the 1992-5 Bosnian war. The four IDA loans which were approved on Tuesday have a 35-year maturity and a 10-year grace period, the statement said. The terms of the so-called "Power 3" project, worth a total of some $225 million, were negotiated only last month after Bosnia's Serb republic gave its approval after more than a year of delays. The power sector in the Balkan country, made up of the Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation, is dominated by three separate state companies and "Power 3" aims to create conditions for the establishment of an integrated and viable energy market. "The project will assist in reconstruction of high voltage transmission systems and damaged substations in Bosnia to restore the pre-war interconnections with the other parts of former Yugoslavia," the bank said. The project would also assist Bosnia's eventual rejoining of the Union for the Coordination of Transmission in Europe (UCTE), it added. "The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) System component of the project will improve power dispatching and facilitate the operation of the high voltage network within Bosnia and Herzegovina on an integrated basis," the bank said. The $20 million Local Initiatives II project would address the urgent need to raise incomes, develop businesses and create jobs through providing credit and other financial services to low-income people, the statement said. The $19.8 million privatisation technical assistance project would help accelerate the large-scale privatisation by assisting in tender sales and preparing the legislative and regulatory framework for divesting utility and other monopoly companies. The $15 million community development project would improve the quality of basic infrastructure and services within low-income municipalities, it added. 07:19 06-28-01 ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
