May 23, 2013
AMMAN -- The World Bank (WB) on Thursday announced it will provide a special package of $150 million in financial support to the government to assist with the economic burdens of hosting more than half-a-million refugees.
Inger Andersen, WB vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, was accompanied by Minister of Planning and Tourism Ibrahim Saif on a visit to Mafraq and the Zaatari Refugee Camp, 80km northeast of Amman, on Thursday, where she underlined the pressure that the Syrian crisis is putting on Jordan's infrastructure.
"I saw Jordan's generous hosting communities struggling with the enormous inflows of people seeking shelter and protection at Zaatari", Andersen was quoted as saying in a WB statement.
At Mafraq, I saw municipalities bursting at the seams. There is acute pressure on local authorities to maintain service delivery and that is where our funding can help," Andersen said.
The minutiae of the assistance is set to be finalised in the upcoming weeks between the bank and Jordanian officials, the statement said, indicating that the package will "take the shape of a programme of emergency support to help the Jordanian authorities finance public service expenditures associated with the influx of refugees from Syria".
In addition, the financial package will enable the bank to "leverage donor support to strengthen service delivery in municipalities that are hosting the majority of Syrian refugees".
Recognising the strain that hosting the largest amount of displaced Syrians in the region is having on Jordan, Andersen said that a secondary goal of the package is to ensure that Jordanians as well as Syrians benefit from the assistance.
"Witnessing the agony of the Syrian people is heartrending but what we can all do now is step up and make sure that social tensions don't grow among the various communities who are so generously hosting the refugees," said Andersen.
"The World Bank's contribution is part of our broader programme of engagement with Jordan in which we are helping build resilience to the current and future impacts of the regional crisis while supporting the country's ongoing economic reform programme." Also on Thursday, the World Bank official met with Minister of Finance Umayya Toukan and Central Bank of Jordan Govenor Ziad Fariz.
At the meeting, Anderson said the bank is committed to assisting Jordan, in accordance with its cooperation programmes in various areas, including energy, environment and health, besides assisting it to deal with urgent financial burdens incurred in light of the crisis in Syria.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim first announced news of the assistance on Tuesday, when he said that "there will be significant amounts of new funding going to Jordan in the very near future to deal with the Syrian crisis", on the sidelines of the UN World Health Assembly in Geneva.
He said that the bank was spurred on to assist the Kingdom after the Jordanian government directly appealed to the organisation for funds.
"With Jordan, they are the first ones who have come and just asked me directly for increased assistance and we've said yes," Kim said, according to Reuters.
"So we are using all of our flexibilities to try to increase our lending to them at very low rates so they will be able to respond to the humanitarian crisis."
Jordan is currently hosting over half-a-million Syrian refugees, a number which is expected to rise to 1.2 million by the end of 2013 according to the UN.
© Jordan Times 2013
