Kagame calls for sustained World Bank, IMF engagement

President Paul Kagame, who is to meet World Bank and IMF officials in Washington this week, on Monday expressed gratitude for the aid given to his country, still recovering from the effects of the 1994 genocide. “We appreciate that support. We appreciate help with AIDS, help with poverty and many other problems,” Reuters on Tuesday quoted Kagame as saying, after speaking at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “I’ll be apprising them [the World Bank and the IMF] of our progress and asking them to be engaged in Rwanda and to give us support,” Kagame said. The World Bank last year approved Rwandan health care and sanitation projects worth some US $77 million, the report stated. Speaking at Harvard, Kagame said one out of nine Rwandans, or about 900,000 people, had HIV or AIDS. “We take the AIDS pandemic very seriously,” he added. Kagame recently met with drug makers to find a way his country could have access to the costly anti-retroviral drugs that have proved successful in slowing the progress of the disease. In early January 2001, the World Bank approved a US $15 million supplementary credit to help Rwanda cope with oil price rises and a fall in world coffee prices. The funds can be released within the next few weeks once the Rwandan parliament has authorised the move, according to the World Bank’s website on Tuesday. [ http://www.worldbank.org/developmentnews/] The rise in oil prices had contributed to “significant inflationary pressures”, a phenomenon compounded by Rwanda being land-locked, the World Bank stated in approving the credit. An increase in transport costs would affect the mobility of poor people by reducing their access to economic and social opportunities, it added.