Low oil prices will make it more difficult for Syria to rebuild from its civil war because the normal donor nations in the Middle East could struggle to provide support, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday.
"I am very worried that there will not be the kind of grant-based aid we might have seen when there was $100 a barrel," Kim said in a news conference at the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington.
New talks began on Wednesday in a UN-led peace process to end the five-year-long war in Syria but an upsurge in fighting has darkened the already bleak outlook for diplomacy.
The World Bank does not have its own estimate of how much it will cost to rebuild Syria once peace returns but Kim said he has heard estimates above $150 billion.
The problem is that many traditional donor nations in the Middle East are running budget deficits because of a drop in oil prices, Kim said. That means the World Bank and regional development banks will need to play a bigger role by using their balance sheets to tap international capital markets, Kim said.