The EBRD's 35th Annual Meeting and Business Forum opened today in Riga. Around 2,000 participants — finance ministers, institutional investors, development bank heads, private sector clients — are gathered through Sunday under the theme 'Volatile to versatile: economies innovating in a changing world.'
For Central Asia, three things matter most this week. First, the Governors' plenary on June 6, where the Bank will formally reaffirm its strategic priorities — including the governance conditionality framework that will shape lending terms for 2027–2030. Second, the launch of the updated Regional Economic Prospects on June 7, the first comprehensive read on how the EBRD now assesses 2026–2027 risks for the region after a year of outperformance. Third, bilateral meeting outcomes: signals from EBRD management to Kazakh, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz delegations on next-cycle investment volumes.
The EBRD deployed nearly $2 billion across Central Asia in 2025 — a record for the second consecutive year. Riga will indicate whether the 2026 trajectory holds.
The opening session today features Latvia's President Edgars Rinkēvičs, European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis as chair of the EBRD Board of Governors, and EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso. The Business Forum runs in parallel across both days, with sessions on energy transition, digital economy, capital mobilisation, and trade finance.
The Aktau port investment — a €45 million EBRD-EU package for Kazakhstan's main Caspian gateway — is the most concrete CA project in the Riga pipeline. The package was announced in September 2025 and is at implementation stage. A corridor capacity briefing on the sidelines, given the BTK upgrade that entered operation June 2, is expected but not confirmed.
CAW schedule
June 6: Governors' plenary. June 7: Regional Economic Prospects launch — CAW will cover the CA-relevant findings. Bilateral meeting outcomes will emerge in EBRD press releases through the weekend. Full post-Riga analysis planned for the June 9 pack.