The World Bank’s Resident Representative in Libya, Henriette Kolterner, presented a copy of the damage assessment report resulting from Storm Daniel to the Minister of Finance of the interim Government of National Unity, Khaled Al-Mabrouk.
As Libya’s Governor to the World Bank Group, Al-Mabrouk received the report during a meeting held at the Ministry’s headquarters in the capital, Tripoli, as announced in a statement on the Ministry’s Facebook page.
The report, prepared by a team of World Bank experts in collaboration with the United Nations Support Mission and the European Union (EU) Mission in Libya, was officially published on the World Bank’s website in recent days.
The meeting between Kolterner and Al-Mabrouk covered various important topics related to the areas of cooperation between the World Bank Group and the Ministry of Finance.
However, the Minister of Local Governance of the interim Government of National Unity, Badr Al-Din Al-Toumi, expressed skepticism about the accuracy of the figures in the World Bank report, labeling them as “inaccurate” during a conversation with the “Flosna” program on Al-Wasat Channel (Wtv) following the report’s release.
Al-Toumi accused World Bank representatives of procrastination and evasion regarding the disclosure of damage estimates to Libyan institutions, stating, “No local party has been briefed on the figures, which deviate from the truth.”
He pointed out that the World Bank report included educational facilities that had already been repaired, specifically 98 out of 117 partially or completely damaged facilities.
On January 24, a joint assessment on the catastrophic flood damages in Libya was released, published by the United Nations Mission.
The 200-page assessment estimated the recovery and reconstruction needs following the devastating floods that hit eastern Libya last September at approximately $1.8 billion.
This collaborative effort underscores the international community’s commitment to aiding Libya in navigating the challenges posed by natural disasters and rebuilding its infrastructure for a resilient future.
