-deciding which financial model to work with
HEAD of the World Bank in Guyana, Mr. Georgio Valentini said that though the Bank is involved in the mechanism for the disbursement of the REDD funds from Guyana’s Memorandum of Understanding with Norway, the monies will not flow unless the Guyana REDD Investment Fund (GRIF) is set up.
Speaking to reporters at the World Bank office in Carmichael Street Friday, Valentini said the Bank is working to decide which financial mechanism to formulate for the disbursement of the Norway funds. He made it clear that at this point, the Bank is not the one responsible for the holdup.
Guyana should have been drawing down on the first tranche of a multi-year fund for the protection of its rainforest. The Norway deal means that Guyana, once in compliance with all the conditions, would see $250M coming to the country up to 2015.
Valentine said the Bank can either use the Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), or the Fiduciary Intermediate Fund (FIF) for the processing of the REDD funds that Guyana is hoping to get from Norway. “It is being decided whether to use the MDTF or the FIF. We are almost close to finalizing that,” the World Bank Head said. But he said that when all would have been achieved, the World Bank would not be the entity disbursing the funds, but the Government of Norway itself.
He cited the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) as being an example of the MDTF. Guyana is one of the countries involved in the FCPF, which is a project meant to help  developing countries reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation by providing value to standing forests. It seeks to build capacity on REDD, so that those countries could tap into any future system for positive incentives for REDD.
President Bharrat Jagdeo has made no secret of the way he feels about the lengthy process of the World Bank, especially when it comes to funds that are meant for climate change action that should be considered urgent.
He always refers to the World Bank mechanism as being old tools being applied to a new area of climate change, and has expressed concern that the World Bank was the body being identified to be the intermediary.
But Valentini said that if countries want the World Bank to move at a quicker pace, then it is up to them to go to the Board of the Bank, which is made up of all of the member countries who must be in agreement with any decisions taken.
According to Valentini, the World Bank must apply its strict measures to ensure accountability and good governance, and this is where the time is taken up. “There must be compliance with operational policy and safeguards,” he said, adding that procurement of goods and services for the project must be done in a certain way. He said that the project must be reviewed for quality control, and there is also the preparation and the assessment of all components and indicators. “Everything must be consistent with global standards,” he said.  He added that the project cycle can extend from between six to nine months to about three years, depending on the amount of work that needs to be done to get the project going, like environmental impact assessments.
He said that the long process of checks and balances is in response to what the Board of Governors requires at the Bank. “But we have improved a lot,” he said. “We have lowered the time [but] the complexity of the project is a deciding factor.”
Valentini said that once the project is finalised, the World Bank does the monitoring of it. “We meet with the agency, evaluate the indicators and [publish] mid-term or annual reports [so that] civil society and citizens can question the project. Value must be added, not subtracted,” he said.
Out of the Norway REDD funds, Guyana hopes to finance equity in the Amaila Falls Hydroelectric Project and construct a centre for biodiversity at the University of Guyana.