Social Safety Net Programmes
WB lends $500m to help 4m poorest households
The government yesterday signed an agreement with the World Bank to receive $500 million to strengthen the major safety net programmes covering four million of the poorest households.
The fund will support the Safety Net Systems for the Poorest (SNSP) project to be implemented by the disaster management and relief ministry, said a press release.
Abul Kalam Azad, secretary to Economic Relations Division (ERD), Ministry of Finance, and Christine E Kimes, acting head of the World Bank, Bangladesh country office, signed the agreement at the ERD in the capital.
“SNSP would cover the poorest and most marginalised people of the country and thus would directly contribute to the World Bank’s goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 and enhancing shared prosperity,” said Christine Kimes.
It will support improvements in the implementation of the safety net programmes by focusing on the increased allocation of programme resources to benefit the poorest population, strengthening their management and monitoring capacity, and enhancing governance and accountability.
The credit from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s concessional lending arm, has 40 years to maturity, including a 10-year grace period, and carries a service charge of 0.75 percent, according to the release.
“The government of Bangladesh is committed to poverty reduction and strengthening the coordination, targeting and coverage of social protection programmes,” said ERD Secretary Abul Kalam Azad. “The project is a critical milestone in this process.”
The project will provide technical assistance to the Statistics and Informatics Division for the development of the Bangladesh Poverty Database, which would reduce the overall costs and errors associated with targeting of safety net programmes in the country and facilitate coordination among different ministries responsible for their implementation.
SNSP applies a results-based financing modality whereby 86 percent of the IDA financing would be disbursed on achieving targets such as improved beneficiary selection, the use of modern management information systems, and improved field level implementation with an increased emphasis on addressing beneficiary grievances.
-With The Daily Star input
