Skopje, 27 April 2022 (MIA) – European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Vice President for Policy and Partnership, Mark Bowman, is to visit North Macedonia on Thursday and Friday. As part of the visit, he will meet with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski, Finance Minister Fatmir Besimi, government, and private sector banks and investors. Together with EBRD Managing Director for Financial Institutions Francis Malige, Mark Bowman will participate at the conference dedicated to central banks, organised by the National Bank of North Macedonia and the European Investment Bank (EIB). He will also meet the Vice President of the EIB. The EBRD is a major institutional investor in North Macedonia. To date, it has invested more than EUR 2.2 billion in 159 projects across the country. Supporting green energy is a priority for the Bank, as it addresses one of the country’s most pressing challenges: decarbonisation of its economy. With that goal in mind, the Bank has made a number of investments in the electricity grid and new energy sources, making the country less dependent on imported sources of fuel and more resilient. The latest project to come on-stream is a 10 MW solar PV plant on the site of an old coal mine in Oslomej. It was financed by the EBRD, EU and other international donors, and will be followed by other solar power plants in the area and a 30 MW solar PV plant in Bitola. The EBRD and EU are helping to strengthen the electricity grid and connect it to other regional grids. In Orhid, a new power substation is being built with EBRD and EU financing. Via the new interconnector, the grid of North Macedonia will have a more modern and reliable connection to Albania, and through Albania with Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Italy. The project is a final stage of the EU’s initiative to establish an east-west electricity transmission corridor between these countries. To improve the resilience of the private and financial sectors, new guidelines for companies to report on their environmental, social and governance performance have been developed with EBRD support and published by the Macedonian Stock Exchange in February. Some of the investment projects in the country currently being considered are: constructing a section of a major European road network (a 4-lane motorway from Skopje to the border with Kosovo), improving solid waste management across the country, and a number of energy efficiency credit lines to local banks to be on-lent to local small and medium-sized enterprises. EBRD loans will be supplemented by grants from the EU, the Swiss government and other international donors.