The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors on 12 June 2026 approved $95.75 million in financing for the Kyrgyz Republic National Irrigation Investment Program. According to the Bank's announcement from Washington, the programme aims to improve irrigation services, strengthen water security and support more productive and resilient agriculture in selected areas across the country.
Who is paying for it
The Bank's money is not the whole of it. The operation also includes:
- $50 million from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
- $20 million from the OPEC Fund
- a $6.25 million grant from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
The World Bank said these contributions brought committed financing to $172 million at the time, and that the project was also expected to mobilise $11 million in private capital. The AIIB is a Beijing-based multilateral development bank that began operating in December 2015. The OPEC Fund is a Vienna-based intergovernmental development finance institution set up in 1976 by the member states of OPEC.
"The Kyrgyz Republic has set out a clear vision to modernize irrigation services and make water access more reliable for farmers and rural communities," said Hugh Riddell, World Bank Group Country Manager for the Kyrgyz Republic. "By bringing together public and private financing, this program helps turn that vision into a long-term investment platform."
Why the irrigation system needed work
In the Bank's words, agriculture remained an important source of jobs and income in the Kyrgyz Republic, but the sector was constrained by ageing irrigation systems and water losses. Rising temperatures and more frequent droughts, floods and sedimentation were increasing the risks to water security, farm production and rural livelihoods.
Much of the country is covered by the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain systems. Relatively flat land suitable for large-scale farming lies mainly in the Chüy, Talas and Fergana valleys, where water reaches the fields through canals and small channels known locally as aryks.
The World Bank has worked on Kyrgyz irrigation before. Its projects database records a $35 million Irrigation Rehabilitation Project approved in May 1998, which covered repairs to inter-farm irrigation infrastructure and up to 12 irrigation dams, followed by on-farm irrigation projects approved in 2000 and 2007 that built up water users associations and rehabilitated farm-level channels.
What the project was expected to deliver
"The project is expected to benefit more than 450,000 people, improve irrigation services on about 82,000 hectares, and raise water conveyance efficiency from 35 to at least 70 percent," said Odete Duarte Muximpua, World Bank Senior Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist. "Stronger irrigation services for farming and agribusiness are also expected to help create about 85,000 more and better-paid jobs across agricultural value chains." Conveyance efficiency is the share of the water released at the source that actually reaches the fields through the canals.
The project rests on three pillars:
- Modernising irrigation and drainage infrastructure, improving water regulation and storage, strengthening dam safety and deploying smart water measurement and monitoring systems.
- Improving irrigation service delivery by strengthening national and local institutions, improving operations and maintenance and raising the performance of district-level service providers.
- Technical assistance and implementation support, including monitoring, environmental and social management, and preparation of future investments under the wider programme.
The Water Resources Service under the Ministry of Water Resources, Agriculture and Processing Industry of the Kyrgyz Republic will carry out the project through 2032.
The first phase of a larger programme
The project is part of a broader, multi-phase government programme that, according to the World Bank, was expected to mobilise $540 million over the following decade to modernise irrigation infrastructure and services on more than 200,000 hectares and benefit nearly one million people in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Photo: Vmenkov / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sources: World Bank (press release, 12 June 2026), World Bank Projects and Operations database, Wikipedia (Geography of Kyrgyzstan, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, OPEC Fund for International Development)
Comments
(0)