Iran elected chairman OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) ministerial council for second consecutive year

Iran has been elected as the chairman of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) ministerial council for the second consecutive year.

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IRIB quoted Iran’s Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Seyyed Shamseddin Hosseini as saying that, “During OFID’s 30th meeting which was held in Vienna on Tuesday Iran has been elected as the fund’s ministerial chairman for the second year with the positive vote of countries like Qatar, Algeria, Iraq, Indonesia, Venezuela, Libya, and Kuwait.”

The OPEC Fund for International Development is an intergovernmental financing and development institution. It has been created from the member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1976 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

OFID seeks to strengthen cooperation among the member countries of OPEC and other developing countries by the provisioning of financial resources and assisting them in their economic and social progress. A key measure discussed at the Annual Meeting was providing financial assistance in the form of soft loans for the development of projects and programs. source

Related:

OFID Offers Loans to 5 Nations

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International Development named five countries as recipients of $58.1 million in loans for priority projects. These include Ghana, India, Laos, Nicaragua and Azerbaijan, Ghana News Agency reported. To date, 121 developing nations have benefited from OFID’s financing amounting to more than $10.3 billion. source

About OFID:

OFID conference

Excerpt:

It is important, by the way, to keep in mind that OFID Member Countries
are, themselves, developing countries: which means they closely
understand the aims and aspirations of fellow-developing countries. I
should equally mention the uniqueness of OFID, as the only development
finance institution which assists, not its own Member States, but, indeed,
non-Member States. OFID financial resources are earmarked for non-
OPEC developing countries.

Mr. Chairman:
As the largest developing-country-coalition in the United Nations System,
the G77 provides a key channel for the developing world to articulate and
defend collective economic interests. The Gil, as we know, works to
enhance negotiations capacity and create a common platform on major
issues. Certainly, the emergence of the Gil was a major political
development of the mid-20th century. For the first time, the world’s
weaker nations found a common voice in protecting their interests and
encouraging transparency as well as justice in the international system.
This was the case with the OPEC Fund in the field of commodity-trade
relations. OFID is pleased at its record of support to the likes of the
Common Fund for Commodities and the International Fund for
Agricultural Development, in whose establishment we played a key role.