World Bank: 20 billion USD to tackle Syrian crisis

The Vice President of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa Hafez Ghanem said  that the World Bank “aims to give 20 billion $ to the Middle East to help ease the Syrian crisis” within the next five years,  Asharq Al-Awsat reported.

The figure is three times what the World Bank has spent up until now. Ghanem added that “we have given 9 billion $ to the Middle East and North Africa since July last year and most of this went to Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon. 

We have already started the increase, as before the Syria crisis we were giving 6 billion to the region every 12 months”.

Speaking about monitoring loans, World Bank will let governments carry out projects by themselves and “send a team of experts to supervise them every six months”.

Ghanem also confirmed that “many of the countries that made pledges at  London donor conference will have their funds go through UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross”. He continued by saying that the World Bank works directly with the governments concerned and “we are not financing projects within Syria, we are financing the countries around Syria to provide support to the host community”, Asharq Al-Awsat said.