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P-TOMS: World Bank holds purse strings
Unlikely to make any significant impact, say NGOs
As reported by The Sunday Times last week, the World Bank would be the custodian of foreign funds disbursement under the joint mechanism structure endorsed by the Government and the LTTE on Friday, informed sources said.
The Sunday Times reliably learns that the Bank would receive this mandate with the funds that it manages being channeled to the region by the Central Bank and the Treasury. World Bank officials were not imediately available for clarification.

Finance Minister Sarath Amunugama said all monies for post-tsunami work under the P-TOMS agreement would come through government agencies and then monitored by a yet-to-be-appointed multilateral agency. Asked whether it would be the World Bank, he said, “I am not very sure but I think it would be the agencies (World Bank, ADB, JBIC) that will be responsible for the needs assessment.”

Top NGO officials involved in post-tsunami reconstruction work said the Bank would be entrusted with the role of custodian on the lines of the trust fund mechanism that was set to be operative (also with the Bank as the custodian) when the ISGA was close to being implemented more than two years ago.
The officials said that despite the hype, the P-TOMS is unlikely to make a significant impact in post-tsunami work.

“In the first place much of the money that has come in for post-tsunami work is outside the government,” one official said. By the end of April, of the Rs. 12.1 billion that Sri Lanka received, only Rs 1.6 billion was for the Government.
“That means most of the post-tsunami work is being handled by non-state actors,” he said, adding that the P-TOMS was likely to be another bureaucratic structure that may take a couple of months to get off the ground.

“While at the top level, things might move rapidly (somewhat like the CNO and TAFREN), problems would arise at the ground level, particularly in districts, given also the ethnic ratios and concerns by the Muslims,” he said.

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