December 22, 2009: An official agreement was signed yesterday between the World Bank and the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MOPIC) in which the World Bank has committed to provide a grant of 923.742 USD to finance the implementation of preparatory activities of the Public Finance Modernization Project. The agreement was signed by the World Bank Country Manager, Mr. Benson Ateng, and H.E. Mr. Abdulkareem Al Arhabi, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Planning and International Cooperation.
The signing was attended by H.E. Mr. Noaman Al Suhaibi, Minister of Finance, Mr. Arun Arya, Senior Public Sector Management Specialist of the World Bank, Mr. Nabil Shaiban, General Director of International Cooperation at MOPIC, and, Mr. Fouad Al-Kohlany, the newly appointed Project Director for this project under the Finance Ministry.
The total cost of the new project, which will be effective in June 2010, is USD 16.5 million financed by the World Bank and the Government of Yemen. It aims at support the Ministry of Finance for an improved performance of public finance management under the six critical dimensions of the Performance Measurement Framework through improving and modernizing country systems and enhancing the capacity of government staff. The project work towards improving the public finance management tools for monitoring, accountability and decision making.
Mr. Al Arhabi expressed the gratitude of the Yemeni government for the World Bank for making this grant available. “We consider this grant as important support to the government to help accelerating the governance reforms” said Mr. Al Arhabi.
The Finance Minister has also thanked the World Bank and said that “This grant will help the Finance Ministry to proceed to the second phase of the reforms as we plan to cover all the governorate branch offices all over the country through our Accounting-based Financial Management System (AFMIS)”.
It’s worth mentioning that the new public modernization project is one of the World Bank 20 funded projects which support various vital sectors in the county like Education, Water, Health, Electricity, Social Safety Net, Infrastructure and Governance.
