World Bank to open office in Seychelles soon, government providing space

Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough paid a courtesy call to President Wavel Ramkalawan at State House on Monday. (State House)

The World Bank will open an office in Seychelles once the formalities are done through a memorandum of understanding status, said the country director for Seychelles on Monday.

Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough, who paid a courtesy call to President Wavel Ramkalawan at State House said, "I would like to thank the government of Seychelles they have afforded us a room in the finance offices."

World Bank expressed its interest to open an office in the Seychelles in March last year.

Following her meeting with President Ramkalawan, the country director told reporters that her visit had three main objectives for this visit.

"The first one is the continuation of the country partnership framework and the second is to talk about the climate change report that we are also starting to work on," she said.

Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, suffered two major blows on December 7. Heavy rainfall caused severe damage to roads, flooding, and landslides, with damage to several properties, and three people died. 

The same day, an explosion of four containers of explosives at a quarrying company in the Providence Industrial Estate caused massive damage to residential homes and commercial buildings, along the east coast of the main island of Mahe.

When the disaster hit Seychelles, the World Bank executive director for a group of 22 countries, including Seychelles came to the island nation a few days later to offer sympathies and avenues to assistance.

"As you know Seychelles is really vulnerable to a lot of changes in climate and we saw what happened last time in December, the question now being what can actually be done to reduce that vulnerability," said Pswarayi-Riddihough. 

The third is to take a closer look at the youths at risk in the country and Pswarayi-Riddihough said, "We need to do something and we need to respond to some of the factors that we see are affecting them."

She added "The young boys are missing high school, the young girls are facing challenges themselves, teenage pregnancies and then become household leaders of their own it actually traps them in very difficult situations. It is the moment now to see how to safeguard the youth of Seychelles to be productive members of society in the future."

The World Bank plans to assess the situation and work much closer with the government and other partners here in the country to understand much better what needs to be done.

The World Bank will also continue doing is to give Seychelles budget support, and Pswarayi-Riddihough said, "We finished the third series in December, we are starting the first one."

The other area of cooperation is tourism as "we cannot continue to use the same structure in tourism, we need to something that maybe creates more in the niche market," she added.

She explained that such an approach will include the population in the generation of revenue.

Renewable energy is also being discussed so that the Seychelles does not remain vulnerable to the idea of continually buying diesel and when the market changes outside it becomes an issue.