World Bank sets 2-stage mission for East Timor
World Bank sets 2-stage mission for East Timor
DARWIN, Australia (Reuters): A World Bank mission to East
Timor will include an emergency relief phase followed by long-
term reconstruction, the bank's regional representative said on
Tuesday.
"Everything is to be done. East Timor is to be rebuilt from
scratch," said Graham Barrett, the World Bank's representative
for Australia and New Zealand.
"The first priority is obviously humanitarian, and that
involves getting people back in their homes," Barrett told
Reuters in an interview in Darwin in northern Australia.
The multi-agency mission will be led by Klaus Rohland, the
World Bank's director for Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.
It will include representatives from the International
Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank and donor countries like
Australia and Portugal. It will work closely with the United
Nations. The mission heads to East Timor from Darwin on Friday.
East Timor was devastated by a campaign of killing and
destruction by pro-Indonesia militias angered by an overwhelming
vote for independence in an August 30 referendum.
Barrett said the World Bank understood half of East Timor's
roughly 800,000 people had been displaced, either internally or
to West Timor refugee camps and elsewhere in Indonesia.
"Everything flows from there (but) the World Bank as a
development institution is focused on long-term needs," he said.
Barrett refused to put an estimate on either East Timor's
short-term emergency needs or on the bank's wider involvement.
One estimate of East Timor's needs is for US$170 million a
year for the next 10 years to rebuild basic infrastructure and
set up water, power, transport and telecommunications services.
"Money is not really the problem with East Timor, given that it
is a country of moderate size," Barrett said.
"We're confident that there will be enough money to fund East
Timor's needs," he said, adding coordination and consultation
with East Timorese were vital.
The mission will reassemble in Darwin before a report is
prepared for the World Bank's board of governors. A donors'
meeting would then be called, probably some time in December, at
which pledging would take place.
"We need to act with alacrity," Barrett said.
He said the bank would focus in the longer-term on using
credit schemes to encourage private enterprise, possibly in areas
such as coffee exports and tourism.
"Private enterprise is the ultimate engine of growth," Barrett
said.
East Timorese membership of the World Bank and the ADB was
also part of the long-term plan, he said.
The bank would draw on lessons learned from similar operations
in Cambodia, Bosnia and Gaza and its team would include experts
from areas such as macroeconomics, agriculture, industry and
infrastructure.
He said each situation was unique but believed East Timor had
been blessed with "outstanding leadership". The World Bank had
been impressed during meetings with independence leader Xanana
Gusmao and other East Timorese leaders in Washington a month ago.