World Bank gives Lebanon $100m loan for education
BEIRUT, March 25, 2016
The World Bank granted Lebanon a $100 million loan to support educational projects, but said support worth 10 times as much was being held up by the country's prolonged political paralysis.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the new loan had been approved by the bank's board in recognition of Lebanon's efforts in hosting more than a million Syrian refugees, and schooling many of the younger ones.
Kim said an already agreed package worth nearly $1 billion was being held up by the political deadlock.
The country has been without a president for nearly two years and parliament has rarely met during that time.
"We are doing everything we can to get that money out. It's been slow going," Kim told a news conference during a joint visit to Lebanon with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Islamic Development Bank President Ahmad Al-Madani.
"...It has been difficult to move forward in an environment where there is no president and the parliament is not meeting."
The United Nations says Lebanon is hosting just over one million registered refugees from the conflict in neighbouring Syria, though Lebanese officials say the true number is closer to two million -- in a country of slightly more than four million.
The five-year-old conflict in Syria, which pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against a president from the country's Alawite minority and regional Shi'ite allies, has escalated Lebanon's own sectarian tensions and contributed to the political impasse.
The Islamic Development Bank's Madani said he had signed five agreements on Thursday worth $373 million, and expected another $220 million to be agreed in the next year. He gave no details. - Reuters
