S. Sudan: World Bank earmarks $9 for private sector growth

March 21, 2012 (JUBA) — The newly independent Republic of South Sudan is
set to receive a $9m grant from the World Bank as part of efforts to
enhance job creation and increase access to finance for entrepreneurs,
particularly youth and women, the institution has announced.

Laura Kullenberg, the World Bank country director for South Sudan and
Kosti Manibe, the country’s finance minister signed the grant
agreement last week in Juba, the South Sudan capital.

This landmark agreement, marking the first World Bank grant to South
Sudan since it attained independence in July last year, is widely
viewed as a huge step towards delivering critical interventions to
help improve the lives of the poor in more practical and quicker ways.

The grant, according to a World Bank press release, will help scale
up the successful components of a previous multi-donor trust funded
private sector development project.

The new project, it adds aims to provide at least 50,000 people with
access to finance through targeted Microfinance Institutions (MFIs);
assist about 100 entrepreneurs with access to finance through a
Business Plan Competition (BPC), and generate at least 250 jobs by
enterprises supported by the BPC.

The project will, as part of its implementation, also complete a
regulatory framework for mobile banking and payments.

Since 2005, the World Bank group has played fundamental roles in
Sudan’s post-war recovery, pledging more long term plans and
partnership for development in Africa’s newest nation.

The grant, the institution’s country director noted, will provide
access to finance for South Sudanese entrepreneurs to turn their
businesses ideas into reality.

“The development of the private sector is crucial to provide economic
opportunities and improve the livelihoods of unemployed youth and
returnees, as well as women, who face higher unemployment rates than
men,” said Kullenberg.

South Sudan’s finance minister, on the other hand, described the World
Bank’s intervention as “timely”, citing the urgent need for economic
diversification to avoid South Sudan’s over reliance on oil resources,
which supports 98% of the country’s annual budget.

“This intervention supports the much needed economic diversification
of the economy by promoting private sector development in the non-oil
sector,” Manibe said, adding that the grant will help the country
develop its much-needed policies.

Meanwhile the new grant is reportedly part of a larger trust fund
totaling $75 million, which the World Bank is using to provide early
assistance to South Sudan, a country faced with enormous challenges
after emerging from over two decades of civil war with North Sudan.

(ST).