PMFORUM Breaking News

Reported by Jaycee Kruger in South Africa

The World Bank has announced that for the first time it has disbursed a loan in one of Africa's local currencies. The 58.2 million South African Rand (ZAR) loan is to support the Government of Namibia in its educational improvement program. The South African and Namibian currencies are equivalent. The loan included a conversion of the originally dollar denominated USD 7.5 million loan which took place on July 15, 2008 and is the first time the World Bank has provided a Rand-denominated financing to any country.

The transaction is part of the World Bank’s response to requests from borrowing countries to provide flexible financial products in support of risk management. "This is particularly the case in Middle Income Countries, like Namibia, which are looking for additional flexibility from the World Bank in terms of lending instruments. Borrowing in Rand represents a lower risk for the country," according to Mmantsetsa Marope, World Bank Team Leader for the Namibia lending operation.

The First Development Policy Loan specifically supports the first implementation phase of Namibia’s Education and Training Sector Improvement program (ETSIP1), a five-year sector program estimated to cost about US$357 million. The loan constitutes about 14 percent of the funds required for the first year of ETSIP1. The rest will be financed by the Government of the Republic of Namibia, national development partners and international development partners.

The loan will support (i) the development of specific policies and policy instruments to guide and give effect to planned sector reforms; (ii) legal instruments to enforce policy implementation; and (iii) institutional capacities required for effective implementation of planned sector reforms.

This program is consistent with the Bank’s Africa Action Plan (AAP) flagship goal of building skills for competitiveness in a global economy that supports activities that accelerate the attainment of education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), build skills to promote growth, strengthen partnerships, and strengthen partner countries’ capacity to design, implement and monitor their own sector development plans and programs.

For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org/namibia.

Jaycee Krüger International Correspondent South Africa Jaycee Krüger, PMP, PrTechEng, is an International Correspondent for PMForum in South Africa. He is also the Managing Director of Mhlegahlatini (Pty) Ltd, trading as Greybeards Inc. He has spent over 29 years working in project environments with increasing responsibility, from technical design and construction supervision through construction management and project management to executive head of various functional departments and director of a major South African project management and engineering company operating globally. Project experience includes power generation, industrial and mining projects, from shutdowns through brown-fields to green-fields in extremely remote places. He has delivered various voluntary papers and lectures on project management topics. Serving his two professions, civil engineering and project management, Jaycee was founding member of various organisations and branches of organisations, as well as subject matter expert in statutory boards governing project management. He is presently active in the Project Management Institute (PMI®) where he serves on the Component services Members Advisory Group (CSMAG), the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International, (AACE), Project Management South Africa (PMSA) where he is currently Vice President International Liaison and South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE). Jaycee is based in Heidelberg, Gauteng Province, South Africa and can be reached at jckruger@greybeards.co.za. Visit his web site at http://www.greybeards.co.za