You're reading: World Bank director: Ukraine not facing shortage of strategies

Country Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Martin Raiser, has said one of the key lessons in partnership between the World Bank and Ukraine over the past four years is the following: Ukraine is seriously suffering state management problems.

In his parting exclusive interview with the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia Ukraine (his four-year mandate terminated in 2011) Raiser said that Ukraine has no shortage of strategies or plans, but only some of them are realized.

Raiser regrets that not all goals of the Partnership Strategy with Ukraine in the period from 2008 to 2011 were reached (the Strategy provided for financing from $2 to $6 billion to Ukraine). He said that the World Bank learnt several important lessons from the process, including three key lessons that would be absolutely crucial for further cooperation of the World Bank with Ukraine.

“First, we should permanently think of introducing the things that were planned. Ukraine has no shortage of strategies or plans, but only some of them are realized. This is substantially typical for our cooperation with your country as well. We should apply more efforts to prearrange new projects so to be confident in their proper and expedient realization,” he said.

He said that the second lesson is the fact that Ukraine is seriously suffering state management problems.

He said that this is not only corruption. The consequence of the process is that even with good reforming ideas, there are many problems with their implementation, as people do not trust the state because shadow business is flourishing and it is hard to predict what will happen in the end and remain consistent on the way of the reforms, Raiser said.

The new strategy of the World Bank would pay more attention to the analysis of how strong are partners in Ukraine, how strong are institutions that participate in the implementation of joint projects and how strong are the interests that could hinder their realization, he added.

The third lesson is that so far there is a necessity to reach a consensus as for key reforms to be realized in Ukrainian society, Raiser said. This is not a common vision of the reforms without contradictions: people in Ukraine want to live better – under European standards, he said. However, when it concerns the concrete things and we have to start reforming of such sectors as state procurement, tax system, a necessity to apply large efforts to reach public understanding and support appears, he said.

The key condition for the World Bank is the provision for balanced reforms, so that rich people and people with power also undertook a part of the burden.