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Middle East & North Africa |
Portfolio & nonlending services | |
| Introduction
Human development & Environment & cultural heritage
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The MENA regional office continued to devote increasing resources to
portfolio management. The results are apparent in the continuing year-to-year
reductions in numbers of problem projects and projects at risk. Two country cases,
Egypt and Yemen, illustrate the recent turnaround in portfolio performance. In
both cases, restructuring, intensive supervision, and enhanced client dialogue
and ownership have sharply reduced the percentage of problem projects in the
portfolio; 80 percent of the operations in the restructured Egypt portfolio are
now rated as satisfactory, and the disbursement ratio for fiscal 1998 rose to a
high of 36 percent of initial net commitments. The regional office further
expanded its portfolio management function by introducing early implementation
assessments (EIAS), which provide a check on whether the project as designed is
fully owned by the client and ready for immediate implementation without modification.
Nonlending services, which include analytical and policy work, technical assistance, training and knowledge dissemination activities, are central to the Bank's support strategy for the MENA region. Analytical work during the year included completion of a country assistance strategy (CAS) for Lebanon and the Bank's first country economic memorandum on the West Bank and Gaza, which was prepared jointly with Palestinian counterparts. Fiscal 1998 saw not only a continuation of traditional country-based analytical work focusing on key strategic issues, such as the Jordan Water Sector Review, but also substantial expansion of comprehensive regionwide analysis--including groundbreaking multidisciplinary regional studies of education sector performance, labor markets, governance issues, and investment in cultural heritage. The Economic Development Institute (edi) supported programs designed to disseminate international best practices in fields of special concern to the region, such as water and irrigation policy, microcredit financing, and grassroots management and decentralization. Technical assistance during the year ranged widely in terms of coverage and included work on telecommunications, tourism, debt management and export development in Morocco; private participation in the power and sanitation sectors in Tunisia; and tax policy, Central Bank liability management, trade efficiency, and restructuring of state-owned enterprises in Iran. Finally, the Bank continued to offer mainly reimbursable technical assistance to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) through a long-established technical cooperation program (TCP), which is designed to support the development strategies of these economies. TCP activities in fiscal 1998 included work on privatization, export promotion, power, water, and tourism. Reimbursable technical assistance under the TCP amounted to $4.2 million during the year, including thirteen years of staff time; nonreimbursable activities amounted to an additional $1.1 million, including three years of staff time. |
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