The World Bank South Sudan has allocated $375 million to facilitate ten different projects in the country.
The projects that are already running include health and agriculture while another six projects will focus on communities’ resilience and local government.
“We have allocated three hundred and seventy-five million dollars for the projects and we also have another four projects coming in the pipeline, two projects focus on social protection and two engagements focus on public financial management reforms as well as special projects for empowering women in economic,” World Bank Country Manager, Firas Raad said during Radio Miraya breakfast show on Thursday
“In the case of South Sudan because it is a low-income country we gave grants, so far we have engaged in different sectors, we are guided with what we called the country note which covered a two-year period that is sort of a framework on how we engage in the country,” he added.
Raad said the World Bank has three pillars to work on, including institutions building, services delivery and communities’ resilience.
He said they don’t engage directly in the political discussion around the peace agreement but support the peace agreement by working on economic development.
“We need to have long-term development plans that need to focus on institution building and building the resilience of the population to deal with a lot of the shocks that come and to do that peace and security is a priority for development, without that you cannot have systematically and stable development,” Raad stressed.
He said they have a project that focuses on the agriculture resilience of the communities on the ground.
They focus on farmers’ organizations in Boma and Payams enable them to get access to technology and quality seeds, according to Raad.
He said the World Bank has plans to assist the Ministry of Finance to improve its system for budget formulation and implementation.
Raad said this was part of the bank’s project that focuses on public finance management to ensure the budget are cycle every year.
The project is expected to begin in a year in February.
“The conflict that break out in 2013 and 2016 disrupted our programs definitely we engaged after the peace agreement and we continue providing services. We are also trying to draw additional resources to support the flood response and investment in local infrastructure,” he said.
World Bank always support a particular country by providing the financing and knowledge and loan that gives grantees technical knowledge on finance management.
According to World Bank South Sudan, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars since independence in different sectors and across different time periods.
In June 2021, the World Bank urged South Sudan to adjust public policies to support jobs and called for targeted donor investments to spur economic recovery in the country.
The World Bank’s focus was on self-employment and household business activities through agriculture and services that provide most jobs to unemployed South Sudanese in towns.