The Islamic Development Bank is planning to offer low-cost loans to 32 poor Muslim countries as a bulwark against the surging prices. The IDB will submit the plan to Saudi Finance Minister Dr. Ibrahin Al-Assaf at a meeting here next week, a news agency quoted IDB President Ahmed Mohammed Ali as saying. “It will help member countries to have strategic stocks, especially of grains, to be able to manage the situation of their prices,” Dr. Ali said. “It is a five-year program starting immediately. It will target the least developed states and intermediate-income countries, 32 members in all,” Ali said. The program will start this year, he said. Addressing a press conference here Wednesday Dr. Ali said Arab countries suffering from poverty and war will be included in the IDB plan to fight global inflation. Many contracts have been assigned by the IDB and the Poverty Reduction Fund with the participation of the Kingdom to send delegations to African countries such as Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, and Niger, he said. He said the upcoming meeting of the IDB governors will discuss the goals of the Poverty Reduction Fund. The IDB financed projects worth $4.8 billion in fiscal 2006/2007, of which more than two-thirds was funded through Shariah-compliant facilities and rest in conventional loans. IDB, set up in 1975, also plans this year to sell $1 billion of ringgit-denominated Islamic bonds, or sukuk, Ali told the news agency. “The issue will be in Malaysia ... we usually go for a five-year maturity,” he said. The funds will be used to finance infrastructure and industrial projects in Malaysia. The bank will also seek $1.4 billion for a second infrastructure fund to finance projects in Muslim nations. “We plan to finance it by participation from private and public investment funds,” said Ali, whose IDB raised $700 million for its first infrastructure fund. “We had participations from public and private institutional investors in Brunei, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to name a few. It made a good return,” Ali said. – With agencies __
