IFC to shift its financing focus in future

KATHMANDU:

International Finance Corporation (IFC) — the private sector wing of the World Bank Group — has said that IFC’s financing in coming days would be focused on reconstruction and rehabilitation, and programmes for Nepal will be designed accordingly.

The country needs to focus on reconstruction and rehabilitation to attain sustainable economic growth in the future, said IFC Asia Pacific Department Director Vivek Pathak.

Talking to The Himalayan Times during his visit to Nepal, Pathak informed that IFC has assumed that there will be moderate repercussions of the quake of April 25 in the country’s economy and the effects can be overcome through careful efforts. However, he said the country will face overwhelming challenges in attaining its goal of graduating to the league of developing nations by 2022 as the number of vulnerable population has now significantly increased and numerous achievements of the past have been hampered.

According to Pathak, Nepal can quickly recover the loss through rapid development of hydropower and tourism sector to attain high and sustainable growth trajectory. To achieve this, he believes the government should expedite the development of hydropower sector, which could be a boon for country’s economic development.

“I am hoping foreign direct investment will not decline because Nepal had been attracting more investment in many areas, particularly in the development of hydropower, in recent times,” said Pathak, adding, “We have been encouraging our financing partners to come here faster now as a part of response to disaster and we hope they will extend their support to Nepal in this turbulent time.”

He also assured that though IFC has no mandate to announce relief, they will soon announce what sort of support IFC can provide after assessing the damages here. IFC had announced support to the Philippines, Haiti and Vanuatu when the countries had suffered due to natural disaster.

“We are also looking into how we can work with banks and financial institutions to make sure there is enough liquidity in the system, so that it can be utilised in small and medium enterprises for the sustainable development of the economy.”

Pathak further said that they are mulling over providing logistics for the supply chain, construction and revive the tourism sector again.

Source: THT