GLOBAL – The European Investment Bank (EIB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have signed a new partnership agreement to scale up their support to countries facing crises caused by epidemics, natural disasters, conflict and other types of fragility.
EIB says that this agreement will enable both institutions to reinforce the resilience of partner countries and contribute to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The immediate focus will be to address setbacks, mainly caused by the COVID-19 crisis, in Eastern and Southern neighbourhood, Central Asia and Africa.
In situations of emergency, conducting project procurement is one of those challenges and it can represent a problem too high to ensure a timely response to populations’ urgent needs.
This new agreement will enable the UNDP to carry out the procurement required for the implementation of projects financed by the EIB in such situations.
UNDP’s presence in fragile and conflict countries will greatly help EIB financing to reach the most vulnerable and allow both organizations to respond quicker to pressing requests.
During the online signing ceremony, Werner Hoyer, EIB president said: “A coordinated response is paramount to help the most vulnerable countries recover from the COVID-19 crisis.”
“This Procedural Framework is a fundamental step towards a stronger cooperation with UNDP. It will allow us to leverage our respective strengths to get projects off the ground in situations of emergency and fragility, where time is of the essence to save lives and livelihoods.”
Werner Hoyer – EIB president.
In 2016, the two institutions signed a Memorandum of Understanding enabling them to jointly address global challenges and share knowledge with each other in areas such as migration, climate change and crisis response.
Since then, EIB and UNDP have cooperated on a number of projects in various countries globally and their new partnership will be essential to help countries access and leverage COVID-19 response financing and better prevent future crises.
“The health, economic and social impact of COVID-19 can only be addressed by fast, efficient response and targeted funding – all of which require specific technical expertise that EIB and UNDP can offer jointly to our partners,” Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator said.
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