New world bank country director appointed for Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 June 2006, 03:40 GMT]
Ms Naoko Ishii has been appointed as the Country Director, Sri Lanka, with effective from 5th June, a memorandum from the World Bank Vice President for South Asia region Praful Patel issued Tuesday said. Ms Ishii will be replacing Peter Harrold who has held the post for the customary 3-year posting extended by a year, world bank sources said.

Peter Harrold often courted controversy in Colombo for taking forward looking decisions in the development of northeast, and for advocating equitable distribution of tsunami aid. Sinhala nationalists called for his resignation accusing him for allegedly saying "LTTE was running an official state."

Excerpts from the memorandum announcing Ms Issii's appointment follows:

Ms. Ishii's three priorities will be: (i) to guide the country team in formulating a new results-based CAS (Country Assistance Strategy); (ii) to support the government in strengthening donor harmonization efforts; and (iii) to lead the Bank's efforts in assisting the country's tsunami and conflict-related reconstruction activities.

Ms. Ishii, a Japanese national, has been a Director in the Japanese Ministry of Finance since 2002 where she has been responsible for working on Japanese policy on development assistance, including policies pertaining to multilateral development institutions. Prior to this Ms. Ishii worked with the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission of Japan where she helped enforce actions for any violations of the Securities and Exchange Act. In 1996 Ms. Ishii was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and her career has also spanned employment with the World Bank where she was Program Coordinator for Vietnam from 1997 until 2001. Other assignments have included that of Economist with the International Monetary Fund from 1992 until 1995.

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