| Subject: World Bank eyes
infrastructure as priority for East Timor World
Bank eyes infrastructure as priority for East Timor
SINGAPORE, Nov 23 (AFP) - Some 70 million US dollars is
expected to be channeled into rebuilding East Timor's infrastructure next year, when
pledges from donor countries of the World Bank come through, the bank said Tuesday.
The 70 million dollars is part of a 300 million dollar
trust fund the World Bank hopes to raise for East Timor at a consultative meeting on
December 17 in Tokyo, said Lucy Oh, spokesperson for the bank's Joint Assessment Mission
to East Timor.
The World Bank is to work closely with relief efforts to
ensure a smooth transition to development projects that would take place in the near-term,
she said.
"I believe the relief efforts will be within the next
six to nine months, and then we'll be taking over more of the development longer-term
objectives," Oh told a news conference here.
The Tokyo meeting is to be co-chaired by the World Bank and
the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor.
Participants will include some 100 delegates from
multilateral aid agencies and governments including Portugal, Australia and Japan. East
Timorese independence leader Xanana Gusmao will also attend, Oh said.
Klaus Rohland, World Bank director for East Timor, Papua
New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, has said that the 300 million dollars will be
collected over three years.
The Joint Assessment Mission to East Timor noted in a
report last week that the country had to be rebuilt from scratch, after the
"systematic destruction" that came in the wake of East Timor's vote for
independence from Indonesia.
The damage resulted in a drop of up to 45 percent in East
Timor's gross domestic product for 1999.
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