Odile Renaud-Basso, the first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), is optimistic about the recovery which she considers stronger than expected among the member states, and is counting on an acceleration of "green" investments.
"Overall, 2020 was less negative than expected" and 2021 "much better than expected" in the countries where the EBRD invests, explained the Frenchwoman in an interview with AFP by videoconference, before the general assembly of the organization next week.
The Bank, founded after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, will then celebrate its 30 years and a total of 150 billion euros of investments.
Many of the 38 countries where the EBRD is present have been hit hard by the economic consequences of the pandemic, but the institution's forecasts, which will be announced Tuesday morning, should show a marked improvement with the reopening of most of these savings and advances in covid-19 vaccination.
Ms. Renaud-Basso attributes these better-than-expected prospects to a rebound in manufacturing, industrial production, and the price of raw materials even if “great uncertainties” remain, in particular on the recovery of tourism in countries which depend on it as Tunisia, which has suffered greatly from lockdowns linked to covid.
Lebanon remains in particular "in great difficulty" because of the political crisis which undermines the country since a massive and deadly explosion in Beirut in August.
According to the IMF, the country's activity is expected to contract further after a 25% recession in 2020. The EBRD will publish its own forecasts on Tuesday.
- Green recovery -
The organization estimates that the post-covid recovery will have to be done from the angle of the energy transition and predicts that half of its investments will be low carbon in 2025. “We were close to this objective in 2019 but with the health crisis this The figure fell below 30% last year, ”explains Ms. Renaud-Basso.
She regrets that it is "very difficult to have this level of private sector investment" in green projects compared to large infrastructure programs that are funded by governments.
But the EBRD wants to move forward and ensure that by 2022 "all our projects, activities and investments are consistent with the Paris agreement" of 2015, which aims to limit the increase in temperature. planetary within two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
- Equal opportunities crisis -
The former director of the French public treasury, who took the head of the EBRD in November, also stresses that the impact of the pandemic has been particularly felt by women and young workers, because they are widely employed in the services and the hotel and catering industry, sectors forced to cease their activity for long months in the face of the pandemic.
“There is a crisis of equal opportunities, of gender equality (...).
One of the objectives of an institution like the EBRD is to help countries meet this challenge and take this dimension in our financing ”, by paying attention to those offered to women entrepreneurs, insists the leader.
Finally, the boss of the EBRD wants her institution to better support the digital transformation of countries, accelerated by the pandemic.
The Bank itself is moving towards a hybrid model between telework and office.
"We will not go back to the system before the crisis" even if she considers that it is not "the panacea".
"There are downsides" to teleworking, including the loss of the ability "to think collectively," she notes.
The virtual meeting begins Monday through Friday, with speakers including US politician John Kerry, UN climate envoy and former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, primatologist Jane Goodall, the chief economists of the EBRD and the IMF.
On the last day of the annual meeting on Friday, Odile Renaud-Basso will participate in a discussion with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on the challenges of the recovery.
bcp / rfj / ved / js / alc
