ISLAMABAD: The World Bank is considering providing a loan of $250 million to Pakistan to strengthen the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS), health and education systems essential for human capital accumulation, and improving the contribution of women and girls to economic productivity, and federal safety nets to respond to shocks in a more efficient manner.

According to the World Bank, the proposed operation is the first in a series of two Development Policy Credit (DPC) operations for the project known as ‘Securing Human Investments to Foster Transformation (Shift). The project is being prepared as part of a package including the resilient institutions for sustainable economy, aimed at supporting medium-term structural reforms over the next three years focusing on fiscal management, growth and competitiveness, and human capital outcomes for productivity gains.

Currently, Pakistan is not investing enough in its people to accelerate better human capital outcomes, and the country scores low in the World Bank Human Capital Index. As the index is directly linked to productivity, if no changes in human capital accumulation take place, a Pakistani child born today is expected to be only 40 per cent as productive as he or she would be when turning the age of 18.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2019