The word came on 25 June from Madi Takiyev, Kazakhstan’s finance minister and a deputy chairman of the EDB, at the bank’s annual meeting and business forum in Almaty. He said Oman is expected to join this year, that talks with Mongolia have begun, and that the bank is opening more overseas offices. Its cumulative portfolio, he said, has reached about $22 billion across 326 projects.
The EDB is not a household name in the West, and that is part of how it works. Founded in 2006 by Russia and Kazakhstan, its two largest shareholders, it lends across Central Asia and the South Caucasus for transport, energy, water and industry. It is the regional development bank that runs through neither Washington nor Beijing, and its quiet expansion is a small map of where money is comfortable going.
A bank built by Moscow and Astana is collecting members while one of its founders is under sanctions.
The timing is the story. Russia, the bank’s anchor, sits under the heaviest sanctions regime in the world. A Gulf state preparing to buy in, and Mongolia opening talks, shows an institution that can still attract members while its largest shareholder cannot easily move money through Western channels. For Astana, which co-founded the bank and hosts this meeting, the EDB is a way to keep capital flowing through a vehicle it part-owns, on terms it helps set.
The host’s own numbers were the other headline. Takiyev said foreign direct investment in Kazakhstan rose 14.4% to $20.5 billion and fixed capital investment hit a record $43.5 billion, while Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov put Kazakhstan’s draw from the EDB at $5.2 billion under the bank’s current strategy. Kyrgyzstan’s economy minister, on the same stage, claimed 12.2% growth for the first five months of the year. The forum’s job is to make the region look like the place to be.
What to watch is whether the new members bring capital or only a flag. An institution widens its shareholder list for two reasons, to raise money and to spread legitimacy. Oman has money. Mongolia, squeezed between Russia and China and short of cash, mostly needs the access. Either way the EDB is doing what the SCO is trying to do a few hundred kilometres east: building a financial architecture that routes around the Western one. This one already has a balance sheet.