The assistance will come mainly on 15 major areas, including roads and power transmission and development projects, education, micro-finances, poverty reduction, agricultural sector and climate change and disaster mitigation, among others.[break]
Fundamentally, programs for which assistances will be pledged are consistent with the country´s three-year plan and are organized around three pillars that support the government´s goal to build a peaceful, prosperous and just Nepal, said Ellen Goldstein, WB Country Director for Nepal.
Under the first pillar, the new strategy -- designed as Interim Strategy Note (INS) -- focuses on enhancing connectivity and productivity for growth. The second intends to reduce vulnerabilities and improving resilience, while the third pillar concentrates on promoting access to better quality services.
“Governance, accountability, gender equality and social inclusion are the themes that run across all three pillars,” said Goldstein.
Within each of these pillars, the strategy identifies specific areas where the WB Group would extend support. For instance, the WB says assistance on areas like roads, food security and livelihood vulnerability, education, health, urban services, and disaster management would be provided through International Development Association (IDA) - the concessional lending arm of the World Bank.
The IDA assistance will focus on improving food security, reducing malnutrition, improving immunization coverage of children and enhancing the access to and quality of education, according to INS.
Likewise, International Finance Corporation (IFC) would support on improving access to finance and investment climate, trade facilitation, lending to small and medium enterprises and trade finance facilities for local banks, said Rajeev Gopal, resident representative of IFC for Nepal.
IDA and IFC will also work together on power development, agriculture and climate change.
Prolonged political transition, despite latest optimism towards peace process, is still posing challenges to development, according to the INS. It also cites high dependency on remittance, low growth, severe energy deficit and financial sector weaknesses as other problems facing the country.
It, however, lauds progresses seen on poverty reduction, social welfare and various social sectors.
“Nepal has done particularly good on poverty and Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) Nepal that contributed immensely in raising real income and consumption of the poor must be scaled up,” said Goldstein, adding that Nepal could also get support for implementing third phase of PAF under INS.
She noted that INS also offers flexibility to innovate programs to accommodate possible change in priority of the government, in case such changes happened.
Finance Minister Barsha Man Pun, who released the INS, welcomed the WB´s assistance offers.
Related story
Japan cryptocurrency exchange to refund stolen $400m
