Fuente : World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org

Donors to Iraq Hope to Speed Aid Pledged for Projects

/noticias.info/ A two-day meeting of potential donors to the reconstruction of Iraq ended Thursday with a general agreement that aid already committed to Iraq should be disbursed faster and that Iraqi companies should get priority for contracts. But many admitted that the outlook for faster spending and construction remained clouded by daily violence, The New York Times reports.

The United States came away without the explicit commitment it sought from others to fill the $3.5 billion gap in its own spending plans created by the emergency decision to shift that amount to security and jobs programs in Iraq, cutting into planned improvements in water, sewage and electric power systems. With news of kidnappings and bombings hanging like a cloud over the meeting of 57 countries and groups, people at the meeting underlined the urgency of hastening aid projects, with several saying Iraq faced a 90-day deadline for setting the stage for elections in January. To work around the security problem, donor countries seemed to favor an Iraqi proposal to reduce reliance on foreign contractors inside Iraq and to channel the money to areas of the country that seem to be peaceful. Separately, in Paris, talks started Thursday to negotiate to reduce or forgive the $40 billion in government debt to Western countries and Japan run up during the decades of rule by Saddam Hussein. Another $80 billion is owed to Middle Eastern and other creditors.

Kyodo (Japan) meanwhile reports few participants made major pledges during the session of the Donor Committee of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq. Bernhard Zepter, head of the delegation of the European Commission, offered 30 million euros to support Iraq's parliamentary elections at the conference, delegation officials said. The donors agreed to hold the next round of the conference in Jordan in the spring of 2005, the statement said.

Agence France Presse notes the European Commission said Thursday it was ready to offer another 200 million euros ($247 million) to reconstruct Iraq, leading the pledges at a donors' conference in Tokyo. The proposed contribution, which is subject to EU approval in the 2005 budget, comes on top of 302 million euros it provided to Iraq in 2003-2004, a Commission statement said. Thirty million euros of the aid, half of it newly-pledged, is being directed to support Iraq's electoral process, the statement said.

Reuters adds Iran pledged an additional $10 million on Wednesday, while Denmark has promised about $4.05 million and New Zealand $940,000.

Kyodo also notes the donors agreed to hold the next round of the conference in Jordan in the spring of 2005, the statement said.

The Los Angeles Times further reports donor nations heard that the World Bank had only two projects underway in Iraq from the trust fund created by foreign governments. Money earmarked for seven other World Bank-funded projects, including water system repairs and school reconstruction, had not been spent, largely because the insurgency in central Iraq and the rampant criminal violence in other parts of the country had kept most foreign aid workers and contractors out of the country, officials said. UN and World Bank officials said they were deeply frustrated to be sitting on mountains of cash while needs in Iraq went unattended. Yet they argued that there was no point repairing a water treatment plant, for example, unless it could be protected from sabotage. "We feel badly because there are real needs, but we have a responsibility to our donors to be careful with their money," said Tufan Kolan, the World Bank's Iraq Trust Fund manager. There also have been other reasons for delays in spending, said Joe Saba, the World Bank director for Iraq, such as the need to train the interim Iraqi government bureaucrats in drawing up proper contracts. And he defended the bank's activities in Iraq, noting that it had printed 69 million school textbooks for this year and saying that more spending from the trust fund was in the pipeline.

The news comes as Al-Bawaba News reports the World Bank Wednesday signed a $60 million grant agreement with Iraq’s Ministry of Education to fund the construction of new buildings for over 100 schools, and urgent repairs to 140 primary and secondary schools across 18 governorates. The project focuses on schools that are overcrowded or housed in unsafe buildings.

In an interview with US National Public Radio - All Things Considered Joseph Saba meanwhile explains that of the $1 billion in funds held in trust by the UN and the World Bank, “all of it has been what we call allocated or, perhaps more commonly, programmed, which means it has been assigned to very specific projects with specific price tags, and that these projects are all in one stage or another of implementation, though, frankly, it's quite early.”

In other news, The Associated Press reports US and Iraqi officials doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in oil proceeds and other moneys for Iraqi projects earlier this year, but there was little effort to monitor or justify the expenditures, according to an audit released Thursday. Files that could explain many of the payments are missing or nonexistent, and contracting rules were ignored, according to auditors working for an agency created by the United Nations. In a program to allow US military commanders to pay for small reconstruction projects, auditors questioned 128 projects totaling $31.6 million. They could find no evidence of bidding for the projects or, alternatively, explanations of why they were awarded without competition. The report was released by US Representative Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and a leading critic of reconstruction spending to rebuild Iraq.


15/10/2004 notas_de_prensa_archivo