Global lender will host a consultative dialogue on State Bank of Pakistan's 'Banking on Equality' Policy tomorrow

The World Bank says progress on the project, for which it had approved $200 million for responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and strengthening national systems for public health preparedness in Pakistan, is moderately unsatisfactory and less than 40 per cent of the total financing has so far been disbursed.

The 'Pandemic Response Effectiveness in Pakistan (Prep)' project became effective on April 3 last year with a cost of $200m and funding from the International Development Association (IDA). As of January 28, the project disbursed $79.4m, which included $25m for the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) for achievement of performancebased conditions on cash transfers.

A just released report on the project says the government has requested the World Bank to restructure the project and reallocate funds worth $12m from a component of the project for provision of emergency food supply to the component on mitigating the impacts on education.

The government is of the view that the additional funding will guarantee continuity and scale up activities in the education sector.

These will be comprehensive communications campaign for schools and parents to engage in distance-learning activities and development and implementation of plans to ensure the continuity of learning, including remote learning options, at all levels of education.

This particular component of the project will also ensure remote learning to 50m children whose schools are now shut or will start to reopen. This will include TV/radio broadcast, virtual networks of teachers and other means of distance delivery of academic content at all levels: primary, secondary and tertiary.

The primary focus will be on keeping children and teachers engaged with learning activities while maintaining social distancing measures to minimise as much as possible the effects on children and youths. The report says that despite the considerable progress made in mitigating the impact of Covid-19 on education outcomes, the need to reach out to school children persists. The activities planned by the education ministry, for which $5m was initially allocated, have all been implemented.

These activities have shown positive results but need to be scaled up as a new phone survey has shown that 20 per cent of the households might not still send children back to school. If this materialises, an additional 4m kids will be out of school. This will bring Pakistan's out of school children from 19m to 23m.

The report says that the implementation progress relating to emergency Covid-19 preparedness and response, for which an allocation of $155m was made, has not progressed except for the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In parallel to the 'Pandemic Response Effectiveness in Pakistan', grant funds of $15m through the Pandemic Emergency Facility are being used for purchase of laboratory equipment and diagnostic supplies carried out by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund.

Global lender World Bank will host a consultative dialogue on State Bank of Pakistan's 'Banking on Equality' Policy on Tuesday. As per World Bank country Director Najy Benhassine, the policy has been developed by SBP to reduce the gender gap in Pakistan's banking sector.

"Which measures can bring a shift toward business practices that support women in #Pakistan? Join our discussion on Tuesday, February 23 at 5pm," said the World Bank official on Twitter.

The panel will include SBP Governor Reza Baqir, Deputy Governor Sima Kamil.

The World Bank officials that will participate in the discussion are World Bank's President for South Asia region Hartwig Schafer; Vice President of Asia and Pacific, IFC, Alfonso Garcia Mora; Director Gender at World Bank Caren Grown; President and CEO Women's World Banking Mary Ellen Iskenderian and President Director Bank OCBC NISP Parwati Surjaudaja.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide about $5.4 billion assistance to Pakistan over the next three years. This is part of the ADB's five-year Country Partnership Strategy (CPS).

"The indicative resources available for commitment during the first three years of the CPS period (2021-2023) total $5.4bn," said the ADB on Thursday. This include $3.6bn for regular OCR (ordinary capital resource) lending and $1.8bn for concessional OCR lending. Pakistan is classified as a group B category developing member country with access to OCR lending and concessional OCR lending. The bank said additional grant resources had been allocated for a project in 2021 from the Asian Development Fund thematic pool worth $5 million to increase gender equity.

The final allocation for the complete 5-year CPS period will depend on available resources, project readiness, and the outcome of the country's performance assessments. Sovereign operations will be supplemented with ADB's non-sovereign operations, subject to headroom constraints, as well as official and commercial co-financing.

The existing cost-sharing and financing parametres will continue to be applied during 2021-2025, with ADB financing up to 85 per cent of the loan project costs and 90pc for the TA costs, on an overall portfolio-wide basis. Actual shares for specific ADB projects will be determined by project-specific considerations and available co-financing.

The bank said it would place special emphasis on improving the quality of project readiness and implementation by engaging with the government to have project management units early. Only procurement-ready projects will be taken to the ADB board of directors for consideration of approval.