The French Development Agency (AFD) and Uzbek Finance Ministry signed a 23.5 million euro loan agreement for funding a project on modernization of the solid waste management in Samarkand, a statement of the Embassy of France in Uzbekistan said.

The project is co-funded through a € 8 million subsidy from the European Union provided as a loan by the Investment Fund for Central Asia (IFCA).

The agreement was signed on December 19 by the Uzbek Finance Minister, Batyr Khodjaev and Head of AFD Asia branch, Paco Pascal, with the French Ambassador Violaine de Vilmorin, Director of AFD in Uzbekistan, Rafael Josas and the head of technical cooperation department of the EU delegation in Tashkent, Ovidiu Mick who were also present in the signing ceremony.

The following activities are planned under the project:

• Retrofit of the existing landfill to comply with the most stringent environmental regulations
• Establishing an optimized recycling industry
• Technical assistance and capacity building to the solid waste management sector in Samarkand
• Awareness campaign to promote waste reduction and recycling
• Procurement of new waste-collection vehicles and installation of new collection points

In particular, it is planned to build and repair of 200 waste collection points, to acquire 70 waste vehicles, build a center for sorting and disposal of municipal solid waste, as well as building a biogas plant to be used as a bioreactor.This integrated project is the first of its kind in the whole Central Asia.

Over 100 million tons of industrial and 35 million cubic meters of household waste are disposed in Uzbekistan a year. It is estimated that about 2 billion tonnes of waste has accumulated in different parts of the country due to lack of modern technolodies for waste recycling and processing.

The is the AFD’s first such project in Uzbekistan, co-financed with the European Union. It was the continuation of the agreement between the governments of Uzbekistan and France on the activities of AFD and PROPARCO in Uzbekistan signed in early December in Hamburg.

AFD is the state-run financial institution, which implements development projects defined by the Government of France.