The EBRD committed €1.14bn in new investments in the six months ended June 30, compared to €1.43bn in the same period in 2004, bringing total commitments in its countries of operations to €27.5bn. Capital mobilised on the back of its own investments from external financiers reached €58.2bn.

The EBRD’s first-half profit after provisions was €542mn, compared to €190mn for the same period last year, primarily reflecting strong returns from the equity project portfolio including a number of full and partial exits.

The EBRD signed 47 projects in the first half, up 13% from the corresponding period in 2004. Projects included the first municipal infrastructure project in a city in Ukraine without a sovereign guarantee (Dnipropetrovsk); support to foreign investment in the region, for example Gaz de France in Romania; and financing to improve the banking sector in the region by supporting private banks in Russia and Azerbaijan to be more competitive with state-owned banks. The bank mobilised an additional €1.6bn from external financiers in the first half.

As at June 30, 2005 the bank had authorised capital of €20bn, paid-in capital and reserves of €8.07bn and cumulative impairment provisions on its loan portfolio of €567.6mn. Because the bank restated its portfolio of unlisted share investments on a fair-value basis effective January 1, 2005, it can no longer take impairment provisions on such investments.

Steven Kaempfer, vice-president, finance and acting first vice-president, says that the EBRD has had an encouraging operational and financial performance for the first half of the year during which the bank signed more projects than a year earlier, benefitting a wider number of businesses and people mainly in the less advanced transition countries.

Geographically, around 17% of new investments in the first half of 2005 were in the advanced transition countries (compared to 34% in the first half of 2004), 66% in the early and intermediate transition countries (compared to 48%) and 17% in Russia (compared to 18%).