LEADERS LOOK TO END DISPUTE OVER HAITI EARTHQUAKE AID
(Miami Herald) - By Lesley Clark and Jacqueline Charles
Haiti and its international champions are getting antsy about the slow pace of building efforts.
WASHINGTON -- A simmering dispute with the World Bank and reconstruction leaders is threatening the pace of rebuilding efforts in Haiti, prompting a visit to the quake-ravaged country Tuesday by two top officials from the international financial institution.
Some $5.3 billion has been pledged by international donors to help Haiti rebuild after the Jan. 12 earthquake. But nearly seven months later, only 18 percent of that money has been disbursed.
The World Bank visit comes as concerns mount in the U.S. Congress over rebuilding efforts in Haiti and at a time when hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars are becoming available for Haiti.
President Barack Obama last week signed a bill that includes $2.8 billion for Haiti. The bill cleared Congress after months of delay amid calls by former President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive for international donors to live up to their promised pledges.
As co-chairs of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, Clinton and Bellerive have been expressing frustrations with not just donors, but also the World Bank -- the trustee in charge of managing a multidonor trust fund dedicated to the reconstruction.
The source of the friction is what the World Bank's role should be and the projected costs for small projects. Both Clinton and Bellerive say that the fees charged by the bank for administering the reconstruction trust funds are too high for small-scale projects.
The procedures, the commission complains, are too bureaucratic and further threaten to slow down the rebuilding by adding months to the approval process with ``redundant technical reviews.'' The commission would like uniform vetting procedures.
The brewing controversy mainly took place in closed-door meetings between bank officials and the co-chairs. That is until last week when it became a leading discussion item when both co-chairs met with more than 20 foreign donors. Clinton and Bellerive asked donors to speak with the World Bank to help resolve the differences.
The same issues are expected to come up Tuesday when the new World Bank Group Managing Director Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean Pamela Cox visit Haiti to meet with Bellerive and others to review progress.
Indrawati is an expert in post-disaster reconstruction, and played a key role in rebuilding Indonesia in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami.
``The last thing any of us want to see is a whole bunch of money going into Haiti and nobody knows where it went or what it results in,'' Cox told The Miami Herald. Still, with donors slow to act, the only money the commission currently has at its disposal is about $98 million. Under Haiti's rebuilding blueprint, the commission's job is to guide how and where aid is spent by giving both Haitians and foreigners a vote in reconstruction priorities and projects over the next 18 months.
Cox said she understands the frustration, but experience has shown that rebuilding doesn't happen over night. ``The frustrating thing about reconstruction is it takes time. It took time in Louisiana; it took five years after the hurricane and I am still not sure it's all built up again,'' she said. ``And that is in a country that had a lot of resources.''
Infrastructure also ``has to be carefully planned, so it's earthquake-proof, hurricane-proof,'' Cox said.
Clinton and Bellerive have asked if there is a way to streamline projects -- especially smaller ones -- so they can move faster. For example, now a $100,000 project could be forced to pay as much as a $50,000 bank fee to withdraw funds, they say. But Cox said there are ways around the fees by combining projects.
Contrary to what some people believe, she said, only about $500 million of the promised $5.3 billion in aid will go into the trust fund. The bulk of the money will still be handled bilaterally by donors.
The IHRC, which named a permanent executive director for the next six months, also was slow to get off the ground. So far, Cox said, only two projects have been presented to the bank for approval.
The commission will meet Aug. 17 in Port-au-Prince, where Haitian government officials say a portfolio of projects including educational programs and a new financial and government district will be presented for approval.
The commission's slow pace was among the factors cited at a congressional hearing last week.
Meanwhile, Cox has said the bank's goal is to balance results and the need for accountability.
``We know how to deal with fragile states and get money on the ground,'' she said.
``But we . . . we want to make sure that money is well spent and that money is traced.''
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