Meeting between Minister Kudrin and President Wolfowitz:
Joint Statement
St. Petersburg, June 9, 2006
"We met today under the auspices of the G8 Ministers of Finance meeting to discuss how to advance our cooperation in support of global development. We re-affirm the importance of assisting low-income countries and our strong commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals as agreed in the UN Millennium Declaration.
In the context of Russia G8 initiatives, we agreed to work together in the following areas: debt relief, infectious diseases, energy and development:
Debt Relief. We agreed to collaborate in developing debt-for-development swap for channeling USD 250 million freed-up from debt service to high priority development actions in Sub-Saharan Africa. In some of these HIPC eligible countries, the World Bank is developing important projects and programs in support of country strategies to fight infectious diseases and improve access to energy services. These could provide a framework to deploy additional funds and to monitor their use.
Infectious Diseases. With malaria still threatening 40% of the world's population, mostly in poorest countries, and with more than one million people dying from the infection every year, Russia commits itself to support the decisions on malaria reached at the Gleneagles summit last year. Russia will join forces with the World Bank in the fight against malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, and will support the World Bank-led malaria booster program that aims to achieve tangible results by 2010. The main areas of Russia-World Bank collaboration will include financial and technical support to strengthen countries’ epidemiological surveillance and the effectiveness of malaria prevention techniques and treatment. We also agreed to expand our cooperation in Central Asia to meet the challenge of infectious diseases. We will work together to raise attention and direct actions toward the problem of malaria in Central Asia, which has worsened in recent years and accounts for about 86 percent of all malaria cases in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Energy and development. Without major efforts to scale up access to affordable and clean energy the Millenium Development Goals will not be achieved, particularly in Africa where the number of people living without electricity will rise from 535 million today to as many as 586 million in 2030. We agreed to develop our cooperation through initiatives to scale up access to modern energy services in the least developed countries, with special emphasis on Africa. The greatest challenges are in Sub-Saharan Africa where only a quarter of the population has access to electricity--less than 15 percent if countries like South Africa and Namibia are excluded. Recognizing the need to strengthen international efforts to alleviate energy poverty, we intend to organize a seminar on Energy for Development on the margins of the Africa Partnership Forum (Moscow, October 2006), where all stakeholders will have an opportunity to share their views on this important issue. We will support a variety of actions ranging from investments in energy generation, transmission and distribution, to community-level action, including assistance to local service providers, the development of local resources, and capacity building. We will explore the use of existing instruments and assess the potential of new ones to facilitate investments in the energy sector, including through investment guarantees and by boosting the role of small-scale private energy providers.
The relations of the Bank and Russia have evolved into a strong partnership based on global initiatives, knowledge sharing and policy advice on issues like optimization of the use of oil revenues. Recent projects in Russia are being implemented with a high degree of Government’s co-financing and focus on transfer of the Bank’s know-how and project management skills in priority areas. We are developing a new Country Partnership Strategy expected to further shift the Bank’s work towards closer engagement with Russia’s regions.
We undertake to work together towards enhanced donor coordination, in particular between emerging and traditional donors. The April 6-7, 2006 Moscow international conference "Emerging Donors in the Global Development Community," organized as part of Russia's G8 Presidency in collaboration with the World Bank and OECD, is an important first step in this process. Further Russia-World Bank cooperation in this area is focusing on technical and consultative assistance to the Russian authorities in establishing a national system for official development assistance.
We will develop our partnership with a strong focus on results. We will take stock of our progress in implementation twice a year at the time of the World Bank/IMF Spring and Annual Meetings".