(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) Shington may 30 (qna) - world bank group president jim yong kim will visit saudi arabia lebanon and jordan from june 1-4 to focus on the "challenges and opportunities facing the middle east and north africa (mena) region and underscore the bank's commitment and support.
in a round-table meeting thursday with a group of journalists world bank president said that he is looking forward to go in with a message that i have not heard very much but it is one that i hope will resonate especially with the 100 million arab youth. we feel that we want to work with this region and work with the countries that we're visiting with the entire region on a vision of hope." "we want to begin to try to lay the foundations of what we feel could be a much more optimistic path.
something happened with the openness that we saw during the so-called arab spring and that openness is something we have to build on" he said stressing meantime "we have to help these countries build resilience and our main themes are jobs governance inclusion and private sector growth. and we feel that we're extremely well-equipped along with our partners but especially with the world bank group to help on all of those areas." kim noted "we are planning right now for what our actions will be once the fighting stops" in syria but "we're not sure when that will be."
"we hope it is as soon as possible but we don't think that we can wait until after to begin planning. we're planning right now. we're preparing for peace in a way that we hope will even perhaps give warring factions a vision of what might be if there were peace so that peace may be realized even sooner" he added.
in reply to a question by kuna on the importance of economic diversification in the gulf countries the world bank president emphasized that "the benefits of having all of the income from oil has been that countries like kuwait have been able to invest more in health care in education in improving the human capital of the country." "but again i think that every country in the world now has to sit back and prepare for the time when their natural resources run out.
this is as true in the middle east as it is in some african countries" he said noting "there is a tremendous opportunity right now for the oil-rich countries the gcc countries to sit back and think okay so what do we need to do to prepare for the future? there is some of that thinking going on." he stressed the importance of focusing on education saying "it used to be that we talked philosophically about the importance of education but now there's a lot of data that suggests that a certain kind of skills set at the age of 16 is very highly correlated with economic growth."
on the other hand kim stressed "we work in very tough situations all over the world. we work in some of the poorest countries in africa. we work in conflict zones all over the world. and we want to bring a message that there are things we can do right now in terms of our support for jordan and lebanon." elaborating kim said "there is so much we should be able to do in increasing our global support for jordan and lebanon and we need to prepare for peace now. and we need to provide a vision for what this region ... might look like after the conflict especially in syria has died down" he affirmed.
he continued "it is a vision for what we can all accomplish together and we want to bring to the region some of the great innovations and exciting ideas about how to build more regional integration for example that we've learned in other parts of the world." "that is what the new world bank is going to be. the new world bank that we're building right now is one in which any innovation that has happened in any part of the world will be available to every country that is part of the world bank group and we think that there are tremendous insights from africa from latin america from asia that may be very helpful in this region but that's the conversation we want to have and not simply lament the fact that there's no peace" he noted.
he added "we want to change the discussion toward one of optimism commitment and conviction to build that post-conflict world that i think people throughout the region want." "we are very committed to finding a solution. we are committed to the region. we are committed to continuing in the area despite the obstacles because it is so important not just for the region but for the world" he affirmed.(end)
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