afrol News, 12 June - Comoros has been admitted full membership to the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) during the Bank's annual board meeting, held in Jeddah. The impoverished island state already has been granted funding of several development projects and will receive aid to address the food prices crisis.

During an IDB board meeting in the Saudi city of Jeddah, record budgets of the development bank were approved of. The Bank is to spend an additional US$ 533 million for new development projects all over the world. Also, the Bank said its 56 member countries are to invest up to US$ 1.2 trillion in infrastructure over the next ten years to meet the rapidly growing demand for telecom, transport, power, water and other infrastructure services.

The Bank, which is the Muslim world's premier multilateral financial institution, endorsed and approved the membership of two new member states, being Albania and Comoros. Both states are predominantly Muslim.

Some 26 least developed Muslim countries, most of them African, are to benefit from the landmark US$ 1.5 billion food initiative of the Islamic Development Bank that was announced. Under the five-year initiative, the Bank is to provide soft loans and grants to member countries to increase their agricultural production and make adequate stock of food grains.

The African beneficiaries of the food crisis initiative are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, and Uganda. "This food initiative will be implemented immediately," IDB President Ahmed Muhammad Ali told the press in Jeddah.

Comoros was also one of eight states receiving grants from the IDB's Waqf Fund, which promotes Islamic communities and religious training world-wide. The Fund was to spend US$ 200,000 on the provision of lab equipment and furniture for four secondary schools in Comoros.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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