The World Bank is to provide US$1.2 billion to US$1.3 billion of loans to China each year from 2003 to 2005, the Beijing office of the World Bank in China said Friday.
With the loans, the World Bank will help China accomplish two major transitions - from a rural and agricultural society to an urban and industrial society, and from a centrally planned economy to a more globally integrated market-based economy.
The Beijing office said the bank's Board of Executive Directors have endorsed the overall goal of the World Bank Group's new Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) in supporting China's transition.
The assistance strategy aims to help China improve its business environment and accelerate the transition to a market economy, mostly through an array of knowledge-transfer activities, according to the World Bank.
The bank will also focus on helping China address the needs of poor and disadvantaged people and less developed regions, as well as set up an environmentally sustainable development mechanism.
"The CAS coincides with major developments in China, including shifting its reforms from the liberalization phase to the more difficult structural and institution-building phase," said World Bank in China director Yukon Huang.
(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2002)
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