World Bank official: Saudi fight against corruption ‘important for development’

LONDON: Fighting corruption is key to Saudi Arabia’s development, a senior World Bank official said as he welcomed the raft of reforms underway in the Kingdom.
Hafez Ghanem, vice president of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa, told Arab News that anti-corruption drives were important to a country’s future development.
“Fighting corruption is important for development, it is an important part of the Vision 2030,” he said, making reference to the ambitious reform plan spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Areas in which the World Bank has worked with Saudi Arabia include transparency of procurement systems.
“The first step for fighting corruption is to ensure transparency; if you’re going to fight corruption you have to have a transparent system — people should be able to see what is going on. So we work with the government of Saudi Arabia on its budget system to make sure that it is transparent,” he said.
“It is very important also to work on the public procurement system, to make sure (it is run) in a transparent way and also in a competitive way. And there is a level playing field.”
Ghanem said the World Bank had been providing an increasing level of technical assistance in support of the Vision 2030 plan.
“We provide support to the social sectors — education, health, labor, social protection and so on. We provide support to sustainable development and infrastructure support, to economic management and fiscal policy and also we provide support to capacity building to improve accountability and fight corruption.
“From our position this entire Vision 2030 reform program is very ambitious, very dynamic, very important … we at the World Bank are strongly supportive of it.”
Ghanem praised the “exciting” Vision 2030 plan and pointed to the speedy pace of reforms in the Kingdom.
“One important indicator is what we call the ‘Doing Business’ indicators that the World Bank publishes every year and the one that we just published two weeks ago showed that Saudi Arabia is among the top 20 reformers in the world and the second best reformer among high income and G-20 countries,” he said.
“It shows the speed of change which is really commendable. Given from where Saudi Arabia started, that is an amazing outcome.”
The Kingdom has embarked on a wide anti-corruption drive, with 208 individuals having been called in for questioning, as authorities said at least $100 billion of funds have allegedly been misused. Seven of those individuals were later released.
Ghanem declined to comment on ongoing legal proceedings or specific cases in the Kingdom.