World bank grants Ethiopia 215 mln dollars
By Tesfa-alem Tekle
December 24, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — The World Bank approved a 215 million US dollars International Development Association (IDA) grant to Ethiopia to continue protecting and promoting the delivery of basic services (PBS).
The current 215 million US dollars grant will bring the total IDA financing of the implementation of the Ethiopia Protection of Basic Services PBS project to 430 million USD, the World Bank said
The project has four components, namely Basic Services Program, Promoting the Health Millennium Development Goals, Strengthening Governance Systems on Financial Transparency and Accountability, and Social Accountability.
The World Bank’s Executive Board, in approving the additional financing, recognized and appreciated the impressive impact the PBS is having on the expansion of basic services in Ethiopia, the strong commitment that the government has demonstrated in expanding pro-poor public services, and this being a good example of result-focused donor harmonization in an area that is so central to achievement of the MDGs.
The additional financing of 215 million dollars will enable to cover up finanancial gap largely associated with the completion of core activities under the existing Components of Promoting the Delivery of Basic Services by Sub-national governments, and Promoting the Health Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of the Project, the release said.
” The PBS is pushing the frontier in terms of improving service delivery on a large-scale and making it more accountable to the people,” Kenichi Ohashi, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia and Sudan was quoted as saying. ” The challenges are significant but these are the building blocks for true local empowerment,” he added.
The PBS project is supported by a broad coalition of development partners including the African Development Bank (AfDB), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), the European Commission (EC),
Irish Aid, Germany’s KfW, the Netherlands, and the World Bank, it was learnt.
The government and the international community have agreed that these additional funds will be utilized for the next year, during which time preparations will be launched to develop a successor to the PBS in support of decentralized service delivery for the medium-term, the Bank stated.
(ST)