by
Paul Woflowitz
World Bank President
Dili, Timor-Leste, April 8, 2006
This is my very first time ever to be in an independent Timor-Leste and I’m very excited to be here and very much appreciate my friend the Foreign Minister [Jose Ramos Horta] coming out to greet us. I was here once before almost 20 years ago during a very unhappy time for these dear people. In fact, a lot of your recent history has been very unhappy.
I’ve been very pleased to be following developments here since Independence and very pleased to see that of some nine or so countries that are considered, like Timor-Leste post-conflict countries, this country is by far the best performer on almost every measure.
So one of the things I’m looking forward to learning -- in what’s too short a visit here – is how that success has been achieved and what your Government and your people have done in order to heal so many of the wounds of this tragic history.
Secondly, I’m also here to learn about the problems of the country today, especially the problems of very severe poverty and to learn about what the World Bank Group has done to help you deal with these problems and what more we might do in the future.
And third, the last point I want to learn more about here is the future of Timor Leste, particularly about how your people and the Government plan to handle what is --potentially -- a blessing of oil and the money that comes with it.
Unfortunately, if you look around the developing world, I think you’d have to say that oil revenue is more often a curse than a blessing. From what I’ve read, the petroleum transparency law that you passed last year is considered a real model of how to manage this oil revenue so that it becomes more of a blessing than a curse. I’ll be very interested in how that mechanism works and what the international community can do to help strengthen it.
Thank you.
More on Mr. Wolfowitz's visit to Indonesia
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