“The World Bank announced today a new strategy which would make aid more flexible in the cases of natural disasters and other emergencies in order to reduce aid disbursement time from nine months to twelve weeks.

The World Bank will try to reach this objective via the simplification of the administrative procedures that are followed during the initial stages of disaster recovery situations. The new policy also seeks to disperse initial aid in a matter of just weeks after the disaster, assured the organization in an official statement. …” [Agencia EFE/Factiva]

Xinhua reports that “… The policy will be supported by staffing and organizational measures to strengthen the World Bank's capacity to help with long- term economic recovery efforts in countries emerging from conflict and with fragile states. Under these measures, the World Bank will increase the number of staff assigned to work on reconstruction and development programs in these countries. … The framework will also help develop a more strategic approach to risk prevention and reduction in countries prone to recurring disasters. Multi-disciplinary Bank teams will convene a single task force to develop a coordinated response, emphasizing greater speed throughout the emergency operations period. …” [Xinhua (China)/Factiva]

AFP adds that “… Relevant World Bank experts will be dispatched to the disaster zone, regardless of where in the world they are serving now, to ensure ‘capacity-building’ gets underway in two or three weeks. That could mean a staffer in China being sent to Latin America at short notice, according to Jeff Gutman, the World Bank's Vice President for Operations. Apart from getting the speed and staffing right, the new approach will maximize ‘synergy and sustained engagement,’ he said on a media conference call. The synergy part is about coordinating better with donor countries and relief agencies at the UN and elsewhere, he said. And sustained engagement means staying involved long after the initial crisis is over. ‘Sometimes attention will wane but the needs are still there,’ Gutman said. ‘The risks of continued conflict, and the missed opportunities associated with inaction or delayed response, far outweigh the risks of engaging early on,’ he added.” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

The Financial Times writes that “… The new strategy was foreshadowed by an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank president, in Monday's FT in which he identified fragile states as one of four top priority areas for the Bank. The others were helping better-run African countries accelerate their growth rates, providing global public goods (for instance, mechanisms or information to help combat climate change) and offering more attractive services to middle-income countries. … He told the FT that countries emerging from crisis need help to be disbursed in ‘three to six months’ not the traditional World Bank timeframe of ‘three to six years’. …” [The Financial Times (UK)]

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