World Bank to give $125 million for health, road programs in South Sudan

March 3, 2010 (JUBA) – The World Bank will grant funds totalling approximately US $125 million to finance health and road infrastructure programs in South Sudan. This is the largest package of new projects approved by the Oversight Committee of the World Bank-administered Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) since its inception in 2006.

The first grant of $63 million will support a health project implemented by the Ministry of Health. The project, called “Umbrella Health System Development,” is supposed to strengthen grant management capacity, monitoring and evaluation, pharmaceutical management, and expand basic health delivery and medical human resource development.

Another $40 million grant will be utilized for road rehabilitation and finance feasibility studies for feeder roads to connect production areas to market centres, according to a statement from the Bank today.

The third project costing $20 million will finance new offices and training of Police and Prisons personnel. The project will be implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on behalf of the MDTF.

The fourth project – the Adolescent Girls’ Initiative– aims at giving life skills training for adolescent girls between the ages of 15 to 21, stated the Bank. The $1.7 million project is supported by a number of donors, including the World Bank, and will be implemented through BRAC South Sudan, a local nongovernmental organization.

The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS), David Deng Athorbei and the Manager of the World Bank Southern Sudan Program, Laurence Clarke, today signed the four grant agreements.

This development follows a World Bank admission on February 20 that it was not satisfied with the “performance” of the Multi-Donor Trust Fund that it manages on behalf of donor countries that backed the 2005 peace agreement in Sudan. The Bank, which at that point had spent well under half of the 526 million dollar fund, said it was hampered by severe capacity restraints.

Earlier, countries that had donated to the trust fund criticized the Bank for its management. Michael Elmquist, representing a Joint Donor Team of the Netherlands, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Canada, last month complained that the fund’s legal and fiscal procedures were too cumbersome for an operating environment like South Sudan and disbursement had been too slow. After this criticism, the Bank sent a management team to assess the situation. It included senior bank official Joseph Saba.

The MDTF consists of 14 donors, including the World Bank. Since 2006, the MDTF has so far approved 15 projects totalling $326 million in Southern Sudan.

(ST)