August 05, 2008	Tuesday	Sha'aban 2, 1429

PESHAWAR, Aug 4: The NWFP government is preparing plans in education, health and social welfare sectors to avail a loaning facility offered by the World Bank.

The World Bank has recently indicated to the provincial authorities of its proposed lending in these three areas of social sector, confirmed NWFP Finance Minister Hamayun Khan, when approached by Dawn.

The international lending agency in April had suspended its operations for federal and provincial governments in the aftermath of current poor economic situation prevailing at national level.

The NWFP government, which had been borrowing loans from the World Bank to finance its reform initiatives since 2001, was also hit because of this policy shift.

It was supposed to borrow $130 million as Development Policy Credit (DPC-II) in the current financial year, which now stands terminated.

A World Bank official told Dawn that the bank now had changed its policy of lending, as onward focus would be on project-based lending approaches for the provincial governments.

To this effect, a mission of the international lending agency visited Peshawar last month and held meetings with the chief minister, finance minister and concerned officials and briefed them about the future lending policy.

According to Mr Khan, the World Bank had agreed to finance uplift projects in education, health and social welfare for which its mission also had meetings with the concerned officials.

He said that in line with those discussions, the provincial government was devising projects for these important sectors that will be shared with the World Bank later on. “The World Bank will resume its lending facility to NWFP government shortly,” the minister anticipated.