• World Bank’s South Asia VP urges country to accelerate reforms for better economic development
• Says 10-year framework introduced to tackle deep-rooted issues
• Stresses importance of honouring IPP agreements to maintain investor trust
ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has called on Pakistan to do more on wide-ranging reforms to put the house in order to achieve better economic development and prosperity for its population. It also advocated for global mechanisms to compensate climate-affected countries through carbon pricing to deter emissions.
In an exclusive discussion, World Bank’s Vice President for South Asia Martin Raiser blamed limited and lack of long-standing reforms in the energy, water and revenue sectors for many of the challenges Pakistan faces now and called for protecting the sanctity of the contracts in dealing with investments, particularly in the energy sector.
MARTIN Raiser
He said Pakistan had made some initial decisions that went in the right direction, but a lot more good decisions are needed, and implementations should be made on these decisions.
He said the World Bank did not have a Country Partnership Framework (CPF) with Pakistan after 2015, a period that saw the Covid-19 pandemic and then floods. Therefore, the bank has now considered a longer 10-year engagement as some challenges were enormous and could not have been addressed in three to four years.
Mr Raiser said that “in order to deal with the issue of climate change, we do need pricing instrument that disincentivises the emissions of carbon” so that it can generate resources to invest in resilience. However, he said the climate justice and transfer from historic emitters to those affected was very complicated in global negotiations due to politics, although the moral case for compensation was very strong.
He said as the World Bank was hosting a loss and damage fund as an outcome of COP28, a lot more funding was required so that at least 50pc of such investments in climate go into adaptation to help countries that did not contribute to climate crisis but regularly get affected and need to be helped in preparing for the consequences.
He said the World Bank decided to be selective and more outcome-oriented and ensure stronger processes through a combination of World Bank Group instruments and financing models to ensure both sides remain focused on tangible targets.
