Mr. Jean Lemierre, EBRD President (right), and H.E. Dr. Y. Seyyid Abdulai, Fund Director-General, committed their institutions to working together in Central Asia and southeastern Europe.

The OPEC Fund remains highly conscious of the benefits to be gained from close collaboration with other players in the development arena, and has consistently striven to maximize the impact of its aid effort by coordinating its activities with other institutions. These include the bilateral and multilateral development agencies of OPEC member states, the specialized agencies of the United Nations System, regional development banks and a multitude of others.

In the course of 2001, the Fund upheld its tradition of cooperation by co-financing 25 public sector projects in collaboration with other external donors. These included OPEC aid agencies - BADEA, the Kuwait Fund, the IsDB and the Saudi Fund - as well as a number of other partners, namely AfDB, AfDF, AsDB, IDA, IDB and IFAD. A total of $164.4 million was contributed by the Fund to these projects whose combined cost amounted to $755.6 million. (The sectoral breakdown of co-financed projects is illustrated in Table 8 below.) A further 13 projects, costing a total of $125.37 million, were financed in conjunction with the governments of the recipient countries and sponsored by the OPEC Fund to the value of $109.4 million.

In the sphere of private sector financing, the Fund is maintaining cooperation with its traditional partners as well as developing new alliances specifically with the private sector in mind. These include regional development institutions such as, among others, the EADB, the BOAD, the IFC, the IIC and ProFund International, and national agencies such as FMO of Holland, DEG of Germany and PROPARCO (Agence française de développement) of France.

The majority of grant-financed operations also received support from external donors including, among others, AfDB, Arab Fund, CIDA, EU, the Ford Foundation, GM-UNCCD, ISESCO, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNECA, UNEP, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank.

Further details on co-financiers of Fund operations in 2001 may be found in Part Two of this Annual Report. Click here for Meetings and conferences attended by the Fund in 2001.

Director-General H.E. Dr. Y. Seyyid Abdulai (right) with his guests from UNAIDS,
Dr. Olavi Elo, Director of Social Mobilization and Information (center and Mr. Ross Noble, Senior Advisor, External Relations, during a meeting to discuss cooperation in the fight against HIV/AIDS.