The World Bank on Friday approved a 15-million-U.S. dollar grant to Ethiopia to "support the formulation and implementation of policy and institutional reforms in the country's financial sector."

In a statement available to international media here, the World Bank said the financial sector capacity building project for Ethiopia assists in building the foundation for a more transparent, well- governed, well-regulated and competitive financial sector that can allocate resources to the private sector.

The project will help strengthen the human and institutional capacity of the National Bank of Ethiopia, the country's central bank, to enable it to effectively carry out its key functions of regulating and supervising financial intermediaries, undertaking economic research, and formulating and implementing monetary policy, it said.

The statement said that the project will also support efforts to develop new financial products that are critical to improving access to finance and fostering the broadening and deepening of Ethiopia's financial sector.

The project will also enhance professional skills in the financial sector by focusing on in-country training capacity, including strengthening of the Ethiopian Institute of Banking and Insurance to build up the skills of financial sector professionals and capacity of financial sector professional associations, the bank added.

Ethiopia is sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous country and is ranked seventh poorest in the world. Foreign donors finance about one third of Ethiopia's annual budget, sending more than 1 billion dollars a year to the country.

Source: Xinhua