The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have restarted lending to Myanmar after it cleared about 900 million dollars of arrears to the banks, officials said Monday.
"The bank group is now fully engaged in supporting development programmes to benefit all of the people of Myanmar with financial and technical assistance," the World Bank said.
The arrears were paid via a bridge loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation approved by the government in Tokyo, a World Bank spokesman said.
"This is in fact the beginning of a new country programme after a 25-year hiatus," a World Bank spokesman said.
The bank's last loan to Myanmar was in 1987. It then halted lending because Myanmar failed to make interest payments.
The bank's board of directors approved a 440-million-dollar credit to Myanmar that would kick off with a 168-million-dollar loan to crucial sectors such as electricity, sources said.
"We are committed to helping the government accelerate poverty reduction and build shared prosperity," the bank's Myanmar country director Annette Dixon said.
The Asian Development Bank launched a similar programme, state media reported Monday.
By clearing its arrears, which account for about 60 per cent of Myanmar's total debt, the government can now enter the Paris Club negotiations to restructure its other debts to governments and private banks, bank sources said.