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Kathmandu Saturday March 03, 2001 Falgun 20, 2057.
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ADB loan for poverty alleviation programs
Post Report
KATHMANDU, March 2 - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) today pledged a US$ 306
million (Rs. 22.644 billion) loan for the year 2002-2004 that will mainly focus on poverty
alleviation projects.
Another US$ 4.8 million annual technical assistance for 21 projects were also
announced during an agreement reached here today between Nepal and ADB’s Country
Programming Mission that ended its almost two-week-long visit.
"About 75 per cent of the 2002-2004 lending for Nepal would be for
projects that would directly address poverty reduction primarily in the social
infrastructure and agriculture sectors," said Richard Vokes, ADB’s resident
representative.
Most of the 12 proposed loans will come in small packages for projects mostly
in sectors like agriculture. Rural financing, rural roads, irrigation, rural finance for
women and rural water supply will be some of the projects that will be financed. These
loans will not feature big projects like the Melamchi Water Supply project or the
Kaligandaki A hydro-electricity project financed by the Bank in previous years.
The Mission that began their visit on February 19 held consultations with
government officials that focussed on confirmation and prioritization of Nepal operations
programs, ADB’s support for the government’s poverty reduction strategy, and
initial work to prepare a Poverty Reduction Partnership Agreement between ADB and the
government and ADB’s new performance based allocation system that will link the level
of future lending to Nepal’s progress in addressing major country performance level.
"Poor performance would result in a lower allocation and good
performance a higher lending level. However actual lending levels will depend on
Nepal’s achievement in the key performance areas and also in meeting the criteria for
sector involvement," Vokes said.
The Bank’s new performance based allocation system measures the
country’s performance in 19 areas including sustainable economic growth, social
development, governance, public sector management and portfolio performance.
However, there is good news for Nepal. ADB officials today revealed that it
was satisfied with Nepal’s performance which was better than most other countries
eligible for loan from its Asian Development Fund (ADF) resources.
"Nepal has exceeded performance level compared to other countries and
the performance has been above average," said Brian Fawcett, Senior Program Officer
who was with the Mission, adding that disbursement ratio for Nepal was 37 compared to 20.2
of other ADF nations.
Though the disbursement ratio was good, the concern for ADB will be the
impact at implementation.
The technical assistance will also include the project to assist the
Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) training manpower as part of the
bank’s policy to help governance.
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