World Bank officials promised public postings of construction spending and other anti-corruption measures while overseeing a multibillion-dollar rebuilding fund for quake-ravaged Haiti.
The newly appointed manager of the Haiti trust fund, Josef Leitmann, said he would apply the highest standards of financial management, as well as world-class procurement and environmental and social safeguards, while the World Bank acts as fiscal agent for the impoverished country’s reconstruction.
“We know that good governance is key to making sure that these funds are used effectively,” Leitmann said during a briefing on Saturday. “So transparency and accountability and fighting corruption will be very much a part of what we do.”
International donors last month pledged a total of US$9.9 billion, including US$5.3 billion in the next two years, to help rebuild Haiti after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January that killed as many as 300,000 people and caused massive damage in the Caribbean country.
The World Bank director for the Caribbean, Yvonne Tsikata, announced anti-corruption measures — including some already put in place by the Haitian government — that are meant to ensure transparency and accountability.
“While one cannot obviously control every single aspect of corruption, I can say that we are putting in place systems that will help detect corruption and make sure that there is some recourse, if indeed that’s detected,” Tsikata said.
Tsikata said all the contracts and projects will be published and posted on the Haiti Reconstruction Web site and existing asset declarations, already required of the president and government ministers, would be extended to officials involved in the reconstruction process.
World Bank officials also announced creation of an anti-corruption unit within the Interim Commission for Haiti’s Reconstruction, which Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive co-chairs with former US president Bill Clinton. Haiti had made remarkable progress in governance and the fight against corruption in the past few years, World Bank officials said.
The creation of a Haitian anti-corruption unit and a supreme audit institution, the passage of a national procurement bill and improvements of the budget process, the publication of monthly execution reports are considered positive steps by Haitian authorities toward fighting corruption, World Bank officials said.
“In 2005, 60 percent of budget expenditures occurred without prior approval, in 2009, that number was down to 3 percent,” Tsikata said.
“These are very real improvements in economic governance in Haiti,” he said.
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