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To GRIF and not to GIVE

Jul 29, 2011 Editorial

President Jagdeo came out swinging once again against the World Bank. This time he focused on the employees of the institution that jet into poor countries like Guyana, put up at the best hotels while living high off the hog as they presume to pronounce on matters that are beyond their ken. The President opined that if it were up to him, he would fire half of the World Bank’s staff and still get twice the amount of work done.
Now in the normal course of events we would heartily agree with the President – and in fact we have rehearsed these views several times before in this space. For good measure we pointed out that these employees that pontificate on matters economic and social are invariably graduates of second class universities. But we wonder why the President and all his men were so euphoric a few weeks ago when the same World Bank praised the government’s improvement of its “business environment”. Why take the words of the mealy-mouthed employees seriously then? But we would like to discuss the matter that raised the righteous indignation of the President – and not for the first time. This was the matter of Norway depositing its scheduled tranches of the overall US$250 million into the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) – some US$70 million to date – but the money not being transferred into the hands of the Guyana government. It invokes the image of the child with his nose pressed against the showcase’s window but unable to touch the goods inside.
“The US$70 million is money that we earned – that was paid…The Prime Minister of Norway said that money is payment for services,” complained the President poignantly.
But interestingly, on the same day that the state media reported the President’s anti-World Bank tirade, it carried a report that shed some light on the status of the GRIF and appeared to offer a different slant on the role of the World Bank.  The latter first defined GRIF: “The GRIF is a fund for the financing of activities identified under the Government of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). The Government of Norway has committed to provide up to US$250 million to the fund up to 2015, based on independent verifications of Guyana’s deforestation and forest degradation rates and progress on REDD+ enabling activities.” “The GRIF will receive payments for forest climate services provided by Guyana, and transfer these payments and any investment income earned on these payments, net of any administrative costs, to partner entities to carry out projects that support the implementation of Guyana’s LCDS.” Note that the money at no time is to be transferred directly to the government of Guyana but to “partner entities” that will spend the money on LCDS projects. The GRIF “Partner Entities” are the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank.
The social and environmental safeguards and operational policies and procedures of the Partner Entity – the organization serving for any given project – will apply for that project. “For example, if the World Bank as Trustee transfers funds to IDB to implement a project, the policies and procedures of the IDB would apply.” Thus the hold-up at this time has nothing to do with the World Bank.
As the organisation explained, “The World Bank does not make decisions involving project funding. All funding decisions are made by a Steering Committee comprised of representatives of the Governments of Norway and Guyana.” The World Bank has evidently released some funds from the GRIF after the Steering Committee assent: “US$305,000 has been transferred from the Trustee to the IDB, the Partner Entity for the preparation of a… project… to enhance Guyana’s institutional capacity to address the impacts of climate change, ensure the effective implementation of the LCDS, and meet its commitments under interim REDD+ partnerships.” It would be instructive to know exactly why the President is opposed to having the money going directly through the executing Partner Entities.

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