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| October 18, 2004 |
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| World Bank Cash For Iraq To Flow By Year-End |
WASHINGTON - October 18, 2004. More than $400 million that the World Bank has pledged for Iraq's reconstruction will start flowing by the end of this year, and cash from other donors is already being disbursed, Reuters reports on Friday (10/15).
James Wolfensohn said in an interview that the Bank and other agencies
found it difficult to operate in Iraq because of instability there,
although the situation in some areas was not as bad as television reports
from Iraq suggest. "Cash pledged for Iraq has started flowing now. The
biggest amount of money is from the $18 billion offered by the United
States, which started slowly. But there is a real push in the United
States to try and introduce it," said Wolfensohn, in Ethiopia for a UN
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) conference on governance.
An initial trust fund run by the World Bank and the United Nations
Development Program has already started paying out money. "Indeed the
Bank's portion, which is $400 million-and-something, all of it is now
either planned or committed and will be in action by the end of this
year,' Wolfensohn said. "Obviously all of this is to some extent held up
by the situation on the ground because it is not easy to operate."
Wolfensohn said the Bank's Iraqi employees were working to significantly
improve their capacity to implement projects and "in some areas it is a
lot better than it is seen on television." Wolfensohn said Iraq was keen to tap grants from the World Bank and other donors and was also vigorously negotiating for debt relief. "So far as the lending from the Bank is concerned, which will be $5 billion, the Iraqis are looking at grants first because if they can get grants, it is money for nothing and does not increase the debt burden, which is already very high at about $120 billion," he said.
Dow Jones further reported on Friday that Christiaan Poortman, the World
Bank’s Middle East and North Africa region Vice President, said Friday he
expected more of the $13.6 billion in grants and loans pledged for Iraq
reconstruction projects by nations last year to turn into actual payments
as progress is made on those projects. “I do believe there is an
increasing number who see a need to translate (their pledges) into
action," he told the news agency in an interview on the heels of this
week's Iraq donors' conference. Poortman said Iraq was an exceptional case because of a dangerous security situation that has turned staffers of
international organizations into targets. But despite that problem, he
said projects were progressing and that getting donors to follow up on
pledges isn't unusual. "This is par for the course. I've faced the similar
situation in the Balkans - you constantly have to be after people" to make good on their promises, he said.
Various reconstruction projects are progressing in the nation, with more
possible in reportedly more secure provinces in the nation of 27 million,
he said. Nearly $400 million of World Bank reconstruction and capacity
building projects are underway or being finalized, including $150 million
for water and sanitation facilities across the nation, he said earlier in
a speech Friday, adding that all the projects should be under way by the
end of this year. By month's end, for example, the institution expects the
Iraqi government to wrap up the delivery of 69 million textbooks for 6
million students, as part of a $40 million emergency textbook project
sponsored by the World Bank. Poortman also said he wants to turn some of
the money pledged into financing for electrical and water projects that
will be left unfunded because of the transfer of funds earmarked by the US
for reconstruction to security spending.
Meanwhile, in other news, Dow Jones reports thousands of schools in Iraq
lack the basics for decent education and over 700 have been damaged by
bombing, more than 200 burned, and over 3,000 looted, according to a
UN-backed survey. The survey, conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Education and released Friday by the United Nations Children's Fund, found that one-third of all primary schools lack water and almost half have no
sanitation facilities. The survey of some 20,000 institutions found that
millions of Iraqi children are attending overcrowded schools with
crumbling walls, broken windows and leaking roofs.
Source: The World Bank |
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