EBRD lessons call open access non-negotiable as Tajikistan loan nears board

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) published its Digital Approach 2026-30 in June, and in September disclosed a proposed sovereign loan of €48.38 million to expand Tajikistan's fibre backbone, with a board date of 16 December.

Read beside the bank's Telecommunications, Media and Technology Sector Strategy for 2025 to 2029, the approach shows what a corridor borrower now faces: open access and competitive tendering as standards the bank calls non-negotiable, due diligence on suppliers of critical networks, and support that includes green, AI-ready data centres.

Open access as the non-negotiable

The TMT strategy's lessons from 2020 to 2024 state that a "minimum set of standards on open access and competitive tendering must be non-negotiable" to ensure competitive safeguards. The strategy lists public and private lending for rural fibre rollout among its instruments and says the bank will seek opportunities to support the state in delivering national broadband programmes.

Its diagnosis of the sector's regulatory challenges names unbundling, duct access, interconnection fees, number portability and infrastructure sharing as the measures at stake, and counts restrictive spectrum licensing and the absence of independent regulators among the weaknesses, using the ITU's regulatory score as the benchmark. Its policy engagement is to run on four lines: state-owned enterprise governance, competitiveness and sector reform, cybersecurity, and legal and regulatory frameworks.

Tajikistan's project is the corridor's next public broadband loan to reach the bank's board. The loan would be implemented through the national telecommunications operator, which owns the core network, and would fund wholesale open-access infrastructure so that other operators can extend last-mile connectivity, the project summary says, as Corridor Signal reported. The summary does not name the operator and does not publish the access terms.

Suppliers, data centres and what the approach leaves out

The Digital Approach adds a risk-based framework for investments in critical ICT infrastructure, with the scope of due diligence set by the risk assessed at the outset, and says the bank "encourages the diversification of suppliers in its projects wherever possible".

Its support includes investments in "green, AI-ready data centres and cloud platforms", sovereign digital infrastructure and high-performance computing. It cites the International Energy Agency's base case that data centres will use 3 per cent of global electricity in 2030, up from about 1.5 per cent in 2024, and says the bank can promote local and edge computing to reduce reliance on energy-intensive centralised cloud.

The approach sets no lending target. Its indicators are counts: investments by pillar, people with better coverage and connectivity, laws and strategies adopted. It says investments from 2022 to 2024 are projected to have given about 14.5 million people better digital coverage and 3.5 million people connectivity, and that the bank invested in 10 digital infrastructure projects in those three years. The TMT strategy likewise lists fibre penetration and 5G coverage as indicators without baselines or goals.

The corridor pipeline so far

The TMT strategy counts 88 signed projects worth €1.6 billion from 2020 to September 2024, with 94 per cent private-sector investments, and names Telecom Armenia and Aztelekom in Azerbaijan among the bank's financings. In 2025 the EBRD invested almost US$2 billion, or €1.72 billion, in Central Asia and Mongolia across 120 projects, its annual summary of 30 January says. Uzbekistan took €880 million and Kazakhstan €378 million, followed by Mongolia with €188 million, the Kyrgyz Republic with €183 million and Tajikistan with €88 million; the summary names no digital, telecom or data-centre project.

The Telecom Armenia deal shows one structure the bank has used in the Caucasus. The EBRD invested US$13.5 million in a US$75 million sustainability-linked bond issued by Telecom Armenia on the Armenian Stock Exchange, to refinance debt and fund network capital expenditure, with transition impact scored on financial resilience and green targets, its project summary says. The project was approved on 4 December 2024.

What the documents set out for a borrower is less money than terms. The strategy's instruments run from capital-markets structures such as the Armenian bond to sovereign lending for rural fibre; its lessons call open access and competitive tendering non-negotiable; the approach says supplier diversification is encouraged wherever possible. The World Bank's matching grants in Kazakhstan show the other route a state can take, paying private providers to build, as Corridor Signal explained.

For a regulator, the strategy's list of regulatory challenges is where the bank's policy engagement starts, and the strategy says that dialogue and technical assistance are focused on areas with identifiable projects the EBRD can finance or that are likely to generate systemic impact.

Dates to watch: 16 December 2026, the EBRD board date for the Tajikistan Rural Broadband loan; the end of 2029, when the TMT strategy period closes; and the bank's annual Impact Report, which the approach says will carry a selection of its digital indicators.