World Bank Hosts Meeting On Development Aid To Sudan

The World Bank met Sudanese leaders and international donors in Paris Thursday to review development aid amid continuing conflict between the government and rebels in Darfur, Dow Jones reports.

The two-day Sudan Consortium gathers officials from the World Bank, the UN, the US and other donor countries to meet with representatives of Sudan's north and south to discuss aid and reconstruction and development efforts. In addition, it is also scheduled to address specifically, "constraints that have held back progress in realizing the immediate goals for the program," according to its host, World Bank.

The Sudan Tribune writes that donors from 60 nations pledged $4.5 billion in aid to Sudan over two years in April 2005 after a peace deal ended Africa’s longest-running civil war, between the government in the north and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in the south. But despite $485 million in aid disbursed in 2005, the top UN envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, said at Thursday’s meeting that southern Sudan remained plagued by poverty, health problems and water shortages more than a year after the peace deal. Still, he welcomed the aid, saying it was 95 percent of the money promised for last year.

The Associated Press reports that Pronk noted there had been some "good steps," though he emphasized that there was still violence in the south, and that no discernible progress had been made in providing southerners access to basic needs including education, health and clean water. Pronk urged donors not to make continued aid to south Sudan -- which he called "the poorest place in Africa" -- contingent upon an end to the ongoing crisis in Darfur, as he noted talks between the Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government have made "no progress whatsoever for several months."

BBC Online meanwhile writes that little of the $4.5 billion pledged a year ago for reconstruction by donors has so far reached the southern Sudanese people. Pronk told donors that setting up systems to oversee spending in an area devastated by war took time. At the Paris meeting, the vice-president of Sudan, Salva Kiir, who comes from the south, made a point of asking the donors not to make funding for redevelopment contingent on progress to resolve the three-year conflict in the western region of Darfur.

Agence France Presse notes that US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick insisted at the meeting that aid sent to Sudan be subject to greater transparency. Underlining that "Darfur remains in crisis," Zoellick said plans for a 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force there to be put under UN authority and expanded should occur quickly. He added that the force should remain under orders from an African commander.

Separately, Agence France Presse writes that French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Philippe Douste-Blazy also called upon the Sudanese to provide evidence of increased transparency in the management of oil revenues and to not depend solely on international aid for the development of the country. Douste-Blazy indicated that France was planning to open an embassy office in Juba, the capital of the southern Sudan region in the coming weeks.

Reuters notes that Zoellick also said the US plans to add $500 million to the $1.7 billion it has already pledged during 2005 and 2006 to help develop Sudan. Meanwhile, AU ministers are due to decide on Friday whether to ask the UN to take control of their 7,000-strong mission in Darfur, where 2 million people have been driven from their homes into camps by rape, killing and looting.

In related news, Reuters writes separately that speaking after two days of inconclusive efforts to persuade Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha to agree to a more robust UN mission taking over from an AU force which has failed to stop killings in the eastern region, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Thursday that Sudan is setting too restrictive conditions for the UN to take over a peacekeeping mission in its troubled Darfur region.

Solana told Reuters he could not guarantee the AU would agree on Friday to hand over the task to the UN. Taha did say while in Brussels that Sudan could consider an unspecified UN role if talks with rebels being held in the Nigerian capital Abuja yielded a deal to resolve the conflict. But Solana said that could be too late.

BBC Online meanwhile notes that the United Nations Refugee Agency says it is being forced to cut its relief work in Darfur because of continued insecurity in the Sudanese region. It said its 2006 budget for Darfur would be revised downwards by 44 percent.

UN Launches $500 Million Disaster Fund

The United Nations on Thursday launched a $500 million disaster relief fund that will distribute cash in the days right after catastrophe strikes and deliver money to crisis areas that international donors often neglect, reports The Associated Press.

Diplomats and UN officials said the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) could save millions of lives by allowing relief workers to respond quickly to disasters without having to worry about borrowing cash or deploying resources they can't pay for. The Fund is meant to counter donor fatigue or imbalances in relief aid that have sometimes crippled the response to natural disasters.

Reuters reports the United Nations' new global emergency fund opened for business with pledges totaling just $256 million from 36 donor governments. Canada, Australia, Spain and the United States were among governments announcing pledges at the launch. The first grants from the Central Emergency Fund went to drought-stricken northeastern Africa and western Ivory Coast, where angry mobs recently burned down UN aid offices. The dollar amounts of the grants were not given.

The Guardian (UK) adds UN officials said it took four months for the world to provide aid after Sudan lifted restrictions on helping displaced people in the western region of Darfur. During that period the number of people in need of emergency help rose to 1.6 million. In 2004, when locusts devastated crops in the Sahel, a $9 million appeal by the Food and Agriculture Organization to spray the insects and prevent their spread, failed to get enough funds. As a result the locusts multiplied in eight countries and the FAO had to raise its appeal to $100 million. In one sense, the new fund is simply a renaming of an existing fund. But the present central emergency revolving fund has only $50 million in resources, making it hard to respond adequately and in time.

The New York Times writes that long sought by aid workers, the new fund is an effort to alleviate the ups and downs of raising money for relief operations. At present, those appeals rely heavily on images of suffering transmitted by the news media. Aid agencies complain that news outlets often fail to pay attention to crises until babies are already dying of starvation, or they cover one disaster like a blanket while ignoring another completely.

The daily notes that the question looming over the new fund is whether donors will replenish it as it is drawn down. While $50 million of the fund will be released as loans to be repaid, the remainder will be given as grants. Questions remain on whether the money that donors put into the Fund is merely part of, or in addition to, their existing plans for disaster financing, and how the money will be disbursed, a particularly critical issue given the debate over the UN's bureaucracy.

Agence France Presse writes that the fund will be managed by the UN emergency relief coordinator in consultation with humanitarian agencies and the relevant humanitarian coordinators. It will have a 12-member advisory board, with representatives of eight contributors and four experts appointed by the UN secretary general.

The Press Trust of India Limited writes that upon announcing its $2 million donation Thursday India asked the UN and the international community to move beyond providing emergency assistance to developing nations struck by disasters. Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said countries should be helped to build their capacities to enable them to "mitigate the effects and manage their own responses" to such crises. While stressing the need for the world body to provide effective and early assistance to the developing nations struck by sudden natural disaster, he cited India's development of its own disaster management capacity and offered to "share skills and expertise" with other members of the international community.

IMF Accepts Congo Republic For HIPC Debt Relief

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday the Republic of Congo, one of the world's most indebted countries, had qualified for debt relief worth some $2.9 billion over time, reports Reuters.

The World Bank and IMF said in a joint statement that Congo's qualification under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), launched in 1996, should help the central African nation better fight poverty. The institutions said Congo was the 29th country to reach the so-called decision point under HIPC. Currently, Congo has $9.2 billion of foreign debt. The IMF said that over time the debt relief initiative would lower Congo's debt service payments by about $2.9 billion in nominal terms.

However, La Tribune (France) and Reuters further note the statement said the country must address "serious concerns" about governance and financial transparency in order to make the debt relief irrevocable at completion point -- which could be more than two years away. In the meantime, the country would benefit from interim debt relief which frees it from debt servicing. "The objective of debt relief is to free up resources to improve the lot of the poor," Pedro Alba, World Bank country director in Congo, said in a statement. "But sustained improvements in governance are necessary for these resources not to be hijacked by vested interests and (instead) used effectively and efficiently to improve the delivery of education, health and other essential services." 

Reuters further writes Congo had committed to bringing the internal controls and accounting system of the state-owned oil company SNPC up to internationally recognized standards and preventing conflicts of interest in oil marketing, the lenders said. This requires officials at SNPC to publicly declare and divest any interests in companies having a business relationship with SNPC, they said. The government had also agreed to implement an anti-corruption plan, monitored by the IMF and the World Bank's International Development Association.

BBC Online (UK) adds that the deal had been in doubt after World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz expressed reservations about the level of corruption in Congo. The agreement stipulates that Congo must meet specific health and education targets to reduce poverty. Income from oil, Congo's main source of revenue, was $1 billion in 2004 and expected to increase considerably because of higher world prices.

Corruption Plays Role In World Water Shortage: UN

Corruption plays a crucial yet nearly invisible role in depriving nearly a fifth of the world's population of access to safe drinking water, a new United Nations report on water and development said on Thursday, reports Reuters.

While supplies of fresh water are adequate for the whole planet, mismanagement in its distribution helps explain why adequate drinking water is beyond the reach of 1.1 billion people, while 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation, said the report prepared by 24 UN agencies. Those affected are among the world's poorest, and according to the report, over half of them live in China or India.

The Press Trust of India Limited adds that at this rate of progress, regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. Such are the findings in the second UN World Water Development Report entitled: “Water: A Shared Responsibility,” which was presented at a press conference in Mexico Thursday on the eve of the fourth World Water Forum to be held March 16-22.

The BBC notes that described as the most comprehensive assessment to date of the world's freshwater supplies, the report said that politicians, businesses and aid charities all had a role to play in addressing the problem. Although steady progress had been made in recent years, it said that more still needed to be done. UNESCO, which headed the group of 24 UN agencies that compiled the data, said the report highlighted the need for stronger leadership and coordination.

The Associated Press writes that according to the UN, diarrhea diseases and malaria kill around 3.1 million people globally -- 1.6 million of whom could be saved if provided with safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. Poor nations are losing as much as eight percent of their GDP due to environmental degradation. Water pollution in China alone cost the country $1.7 billion in lost industrial income in 1992. In Kenya, improved resilience to droughts and floods by better water management and preparedness could see the country's GDP increase as much as 6 percent, the report states.

The news agency adds that water use has increased six-fold during the last century -- double the rate of population growth. More water is needed for food production, which must grow by 55 percent to meet food needs by 2030. But private investment in water services is declining and financial resources for the water sector are stagnating, the report found. Investment in water also pays massive dividends, the authors argued. It is estimated that 322 million working days a year are lost -- worth $750 million -- because of poor water and sanitation. Meeting global targets to provide clean water and sanitation would yield time and convenience savings of $7 billion and $340 million in health care costs.

The Toronto Star (Canada) further reports that lakes, rivers and groundwater are being polluted and much water is wasted in inefficient industrial and farming practices. In many places, "a colossal 30 to 40 percent or more of water goes unaccounted for, through water leakages in pipes and canals and illegal connections." Wetlands, forests and other areas that naturally cleanse and store water are being destroyed. Mushrooming urban populations are spreading on to swampy or hilly land that's difficult to service. Climate change is worsening things: droughts in Africa and southern Europe are more intense, hurricanes are more violent and precipitation is increasingly unpredictable.

The daily adds that the report offers many solutions. They include pollution cuts, attacks on corruption, more efficient use of water - through measures such as drip irrigation instead of spray - and better urban planning. As well, it says, more dams and other storage measures should be built, particularly in Africa where only seven percent of the potential water control has been harnessed. Price increases would discourage waste, but poor people must be protected, the report states. The major reform, Gordon Young, coordinator of the Paris-based UN World Water Assessment Program says, must be improved communication, policies and planning by governments. Canada, with approximately 20 percent of the earth’s fresh water is the envy of much of the world, and Young says, has the capacity and expertise to play a major role.

World Bank Expects Huge ICT Investment In Developing States

Investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries will reach $100 billion annually over the next five years, the World Bank said in a report released Thursday, Agence France Presse reports.

The report, entitled "The World Bank's Information and Communications for Development 2006," also urged developing countries to involve the private sector in providing information and communication technologies. "The report shows that completing the transition to well-regulated and competitive service provision remains the foundation of exploiting ICT for development," the World Bank's Director of the World Bank Group's Global ICT Department. Mohsen Khalil told a news conference on the sidelines of a conference on telecommunications development in Doha. "But there is still some way to go considering for example that nearly half of the world's countries retain monopolies on fixed local and international service provision, making the costs of Internet connectivity exceedingly high and unaffordable," Khalil said.

The report said that the opening of the ICT sector to private capital brought an influx of foreign investment into developing countries. According to the report, foreign investments in 122 of the 154 developing countries jumped from $2 to $35 billion annually between 1990 and 2003.  It expected investments in ICT in developing countries to shoot up to $100 billion annually over the next five years. The report also said that a World Bank study in 56 developing countries showed that firms using ICT were growing faster, investing more and making more profits.

The report was released on the sidelines of the conference on telecommunications development which opened Tuesday with the ambitious goal of helping to bridge the digital divide between the northern and southern hemispheres. More than 1,000 delegates from 198 countries are meeting until March 15 in Doha to discuss how to connect the entire world with voice and data technologies by the year 2015, which is a goal of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The ITU has co-sponsored the Doha meet with the Qatari government.

Also in this edition: World Bank's IFC to back Turkish infrastructure; and Briefly Noted...

World Bank's IFC to back Turkish infrastructure. The World Bank's private sector lending arm said on Friday it was looking to focus more on infrastructure, health and technology projects in Turkey as the country moves towards European Union membership, reports Reuters.

The International Finance Corporation's (IFC) new executive vice president, Lars Thunell, told a news conference it would lend up to $400 million to Turkish companies this year to foster development in strategic sectors. "As the government privatization program gains momentum, IFC will be placing greater emphasis on the broader infrastructure sector including electricity, ports and logistics," said Thunell.

As the economy transforms, the IFC is also looking to become more involved in supporting the development of high-tech companies in Turkey, Thunell said. He said the IFC signed a $120 million loan on Friday to the country's third largest mobile phone operator, Avea, which is owned by Telecom Italia, Oger Telecom, Turk Telekom and Is Bank. The deal involves a one-year bridging loan for a longer-term loan up to 12 years, said Shahbaz Mavaddat, the IFC's acting director for southern Europe and central Asia. "It is meant to help their expansion plans. As we know the telecoms sector has become very competitive and they need to do investments to maintain their competitive positions," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

Hurriyet (Turkey) meanwhile reports that the World Bank issued a report entitled "Turkey: Country economic memorandum 2006", which recognizes Ankara's reform efforts to date and spells out further steps necessary to be taken. Mentioned in the report are a number of key issues that Turkey must focus on to bring the country in line with European standards. Unemployment and education are among the key issues Turkey is advised by the World Bank to address during its journey toward EU membership. The aim of the study is to help Turkey "smoothly" manage its EU accession process and to simultaneously define a broader development agenda outside the scope of the EU acquis, said Andrew Vorkink, head of the World Bank office in Ankara. Turkey's chief EU negotiator, Ali Babacan, has confirmed the Turkish government's commitment to reforming the country's economy, adding that fighting inflation remains one of the pillars of Ankara's economic program.

Briefly Noted…The Financial Times writes that donor concerns over allegations of high-level corruption have caused the IMF to put its already delayed Kenyan program on hold for several months, an IMF official said yesterday. "The environment changed, donor support dissipated [and] the critical mass of support was not there," Jurgen Reitmaier, the IMF's resident representative, said. "We hope now to resume discussions around the spring [April] meetings in Washington. We also hope that the critical donor support will come together by that time."

Reuters reports that an IMF team visiting Malawi is to discuss debt relief. The country was missing from the list of beneficiaries of a massive debt relief package for developing nations announced by the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized countries last year. Officials say Malawi, which has a crippling debt load of $2.9 billion, would save up to about $80 million annually if it qualified for debt relief. Official figures show that debt servicing accounts for 20 percent of Malawi's national budget.

Reuters reports that worldwide measles deaths had dropped 48 percent in six years as immunization efforts reached more children in sub-Saharan Africa, the United Nations said on Friday.

Xinhua notes that UN chief Kofi Annan is to embark on an African tour. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporter at UN Headquarters in New York that Annan's first stop is Cape Town, South Africa, where he is scheduled to meet with President Thabo Mbeki, address a joint session of Parliament, and is also expected to visit Johannesburg.

Business Recorder (Pakistan) notes the World Bank is expected to provide a $90 million concessional loan to NWFP for poverty reduction, accelerating broad-based economic growth and improving human development through support to the provincial government's medium-term reform program.

Reuters writes the IMF recommends that Bangladesh raise fuel prices. Both the IMF and the World Bank have been pressing impoverished Bangladesh to cut fuel subsidies -- meaning a rise in retail prices -- to free up funds to pursue development objectives and help the poor. But even a slight hint of such a rise in prices from Finance Minister M. Saifur Rahman last month set off widespread protests by farmers and opposition parties, which forced him to backtrack.

Xinhua writes that Haitian president-elect Rene Preval will make a trip to the US on March 27 and March 28, meeting with the President Bush, as well as officials from the Organization of American States, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations.

Xinhua also notes that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to contribute $20 million over 20 years to the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm) to stop children from dying of vaccine-preventable diseases.

The Associated Press reports the European Union on Friday faces the issue of how to continue funding for Palestinians after a government led by Hamas -- a group sworn to Israel's destruction and which the EU considers a terrorist group -- assumes power. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was to present EU foreign ministers, who open two days of informal talks in Salzburg, with an update of current aid programs.

Reuters reports that trucks carrying food rolled into Gaza on Thursday after Israel reopened the strip's main commercial crossing following a closure of more than two weeks because of what it said were security threats. The United Nations cautioned last week that stocks of wheat, sugar and cooking oil were dwindling in Gaza and could begin to run out within days unless Israel reopened the Karni crossing.

BBC News reports acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he plans to set permanent borders for Israel within four years, to separate it completely from most Palestinians. But he said he would give the militant group Hamas time to reform, disarm and embrace past interim peace agreements before pursuing a unilateral solution.

The Financial Times writes that over the next two days, ministers from the "group of six" WTO members - the European Union, US, India, Brazil, Japan and Australia - will try to begin narrowing down the vast range of potential deals. Seeking to avoid a replay of December's ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, ministers are supposed to get down to specifics. Trade officials have been constructing spreadsheets of labyrinthine complexity to run simulations of what various tariff-cutting formulas would actually do to farmers and manufacturers. The exercise will allow all 149 WTO members to see an approximation of the effect on a variety of economies.

Reuters notes that in a move that could split the 25-nation bloc over how to proceed in the WTO negotiations, the French government wants other EU states to sign a joint letter to EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, saying he must not offer more access to Europe's agricultural markets, the diplomats said on Thursday.

BBC News Online notes Japan has called for a revamp of UN funding. Japan pays 19.47 percent of the UN budget, second only to the US, and has so far failed in a high-profile campaign to win a permanent council seat. Its two proposals would see permanent members paying a minimum of three percent or five percent to "fairly represent members' status". The plans would mainly affect China (2.05 percent) and Russia (1.1 percent), though the UK and France could see slight rises. The US currently foots 22 percent of the bill, Britain 6.12 percent and France 6.03 percent.

Reuters further reports that UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson announced he would delay until next week his plans to bring up the proposal at a Friday meeting of the 191-nation General Assembly. Friday would have been the assembly's last chance to take up the plan before the discredited UN Human Rights Commission opens its next session in Geneva on Monday.

Business Times Singapore writes that the Singapore Hotel Association says 11,000 rooms in 44 hotels have been set aside for the IMF-World Bank meetings, which will be the largest the island has ever hosted. Premier hotels are expecting to do a roaring business. The Singapore Hotel Association said room rates have been fixed - ranging from $100 for a room at Hotel Asia to as much as $6,880 for a suite at the Ritz-Carlton.

Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam, writes in an op-ed in The Independent (UK) that a year on from the Africa Commission report, the jury is still out. On trade, no longer having to demonstrate the "neutrality" of its EU presidency, the UK must push for a deal that allows Africa all the policy options it needs to grow, and limits rich country farm subsidies that cause dumping. It should refuse to endorse any final deal that does not do this. On debt, the Treasury should return Nigeria's money. On conflict, the Government should push harder for an international arms trade treaty to stop weapons getting into the wrong hands, she writes.