RIYADH, May 9: The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) plans to launch a $10 billion Poverty Reduction Fund (PRF) in member countries. The fund is expected to be launched during the annual meeting of the IDB in the Senegalese capital of Dakar at the end of this month.
A number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco and Libya, have welcomed the project. The fund is being launched on the basis of decisions taken by the OIC leaders during their extraordinary summit in Makkah in December, 2005. Saudi Arabia has offered to contribute $1 billion to the fund.
The annual meeting of the IDB board of governors will be held for the first time in Dakar on May 29 and will be attended by ministers of finance, economy and planning of the IDB member countries. About 600 delegates, representing international and regional financial organisations, Islamic banks, national development financial institutions of member countries and the Association of Contractors and Consultants in the OIC states will attend the meeting.
The Poverty Reduction Fund has so far received $1.35 billion in contribution from 21 member countries.
“The IDB in its capacity as an international Islamic financial institution is committed to exerting every conceivable effort and mustering all its energies and capacities to combat poverty,” IDB president Ahmed Mohammed Ali told the press here. He said the bank would allocate $350 million annually for poverty reduction projects.
Meanwhile, the OIC and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria have agreed to cooperate and foster a strategic partnership in fighting pandemic diseases in member states. The global fund was created in 2002 by the UN General Assembly to fight three of the most devastating diseases. As a partnership between governments, civil society, private sector and affected communities, it operates as a financial instrument, and not as an implementing entity.
