World Bank’s executive director meets President Ramkalawan   |12 December 2023

Dr Ngaruko during his meeting with President Ramkalawan yesterday morning at State House

Executive director of the World Bank group, Dr Floribert Ngaruko, met with President Wavel Ramkalawan yesterday morning at State House.

Dr Ngaruko, a Burundi national, serves as the executive director for 22 African countries, including Seychelles.

“This is a typical visit I do to every country in my constituency for two broad objectives – firstly to introduce myself to the authorities and secondly to better understand how I can assist the country while I am doing my work in Washington.”

Dr Ngaruko sympathised with the President, the government and people of Seychelles after the two disasters which happened a few days ago.

“We discussed how the World Bank can assist, responding to the situation. We are still at the assessment stage and going forward we hope we will get a report coming from that assessment, then we will know our actions/response from the World Bank,” he stated.

“I also congratulated the President for the good management Seychelles shown in post-Covid period. It is a prudent management which is showing the results now as the tourism sector is recovering, on macro-economic account, the situation is good. I really wanted to congratulate him for that.”

Going forward, Dr Ngaruko spoke about the World Bank Group’s Country Partnership Framework (CPF) which aims to make the country-driven model more systematic, evidence-based, selective, and focused on the Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and increasing shared prosperity in a sustainable manner.

“This is a document on which the World Bank and the country agreed what to work on and it is currently being worked on by the Finance Ministry,” explained Dr Ngaruko.

The World Bank does step in to assist countries where there are natural calamities. “The World Bank help in those situations. Recently the World Bank helped Mozambique and Malawi which were badly hit by cyclone Freddy. It is unfortunate that Seychelles had to go through these.”

Dr Ngaruko was accompanied by the Governor of the Central Bank of Seychelles Caroline Abel and the advisor to the executive director, Sam Morris Aruna.

Vidya Gappy

Photo: Joena Meme