BUDAPEST : Luring Businessmen

Central and East European leaders get a chance to lobby Western lenders for more money when the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development holds its second annual meeting starting Monday.

Given the all-but-impossible task of helping create conditions in the former Soviet Bloc countries that will make Western countries want to do business there, EBRD has begun slowly to finance the overhaul of the region’s infrastructure, including telecommunications, roads, financial and legal systems.

In its first year of operation, the bank committed $770 million in loans and equity purchases from the initial $12 billion in operating funds pledged by its 39 member countries, including, at $1.2 billion, the United States.