As reported earlier this week by Bloomberg, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) confirmed once again that it will not to resume operations in Russia in the foreseeable future.
As the EBRD’s board met Wednesday in Cyprus, the Russian economy minister, Maxim Oreshkin, questioned the legitimacy of the 2014 decision to freeze new investment projects in Russia, arguing that the bank violated its own rules.
This decision had been taken amid the international tensions triggered by the Ukrainian crisis.
Last year, the bank already considered revising its position. According to media reports and statements from the Russian side, the profitability of the EBRD’s Russian projects was found to be higher than the average, while the state of mind of some of the bank’s shareholders towards Russia had changed positively.
However, the EBRD shareholders’ position towards Russia remained unchanged.
When created in the early 1990s to support Eastern European countries in their transition toward a market economy, the EBRD considered help to Russia as being “its single biggest challenge.”
In total, the EBRD invested €24 billion in Russia, spread over 800 projects, from 1991 to 2014. Its last investments in the IT and telecom sectors went to online package tour reseller Travalata, IT service company Maykor, Internet broadband provider Trivon, and telecom tower operator Russian Towers, among others.
The EBRD’s portfolio in Russia has almost halved, to 3.7 billion euros ($4.1 billion), since the end of 2014, notes Bloomberg.
All EBRD projects must be approved by the Board representing the 64 countries and two international institutions (the EU and the EIB), which own the EBRD.
