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.