Pakistan and the World Bank sign new loan deals worth USD 1.336 billion

The World Bank has pledged to provide $1.336 billion in loans to Pakistan to help improve the country's pinched foreign exchange reserves and finance social sector programmes.

The representatives from Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa signed their contracts online. Noor Ahmad, Secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, signed the financing agreements on account of the Pakistani government. The World Bank's Country Director, Najy Benhassine, approved the agreements at the behest of his organisation, while the Minister of Economic Affairs Khusro Bakhtyar was also in attendance.

According to the Dawn newspaper, six project agreements worth $1.336 billion in loans were signed on Friday to help the government's initiatives in the social welfare, disaster and environment risk management, developing infrastructure for food security, resilience, agriculture, governance sectors and human capital development.

The newspaper informed further that the first $600 million loan arrangement was for the Crisis-Resilient Social Protection Programme (CRISP), which seeks to promote the implementation of a more flexible social protection system that will help poor and disadvantaged households in the country withstand any future crises.

Through a creative, holistic approach that combines social assistance with advancement of increased savings that informal workers, mainly females, can rely on in the event of economic crises, the CRISP would encourage the gradual expansion of Ehsaas social security programmes to better reach informal sector.

Najy Benhassine made a statement, “Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of families across Pakistan face economic hardship, particularly those working in the informal sector, who have no savings or are not covered by existing social safety net programmes."