The World Bank has approved a loan of $300 million to Tunisia to urgently meet the needs of poor and low-income families that have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Development Diaries understands that the aim of the loan is to reduce poverty and social vulnerability and provide decent living conditions for disadvantaged groups in the north African nation.
The World Bank estimates that 60 percent of the population in the country are poor or vulnerable and the pandemic has made the situation worse.
Tunisia Country Manager for World Bank, Tony Verheijen, said that the loan will provide circumstantial financial transfers to 900 thousand and one million poor Tunisian families who have been adversely impacted by the pandemic.
Verheijen said that the World Bank support was within the scope of the National Social Safety Programme approved by the Tunisian government in 2019.
‘This support is based on several main axes, including expanding social protection to include occasional assistance for the largest possible number of poor and needy families that were identified in the database, besides allocating grants to protect human capital for poor families with children from zero to five years in order to improve their access to health, educational and other services’, Verheijen said.
‘This is not to mention the support allocated for the creation of the National Agency for Integration and Social Development’.
On the most prominent achievements of Tunisia in the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, Verheijen said that it was the use of digital mechanisms to accelerate the transfer of aid to those who needed it and avoid the risk of crowding in front of post offices.
He said, ‘The current idea is to renew last years’ experience and transfer that aid to those who deserve it, by using digital mechanisms without queuing up.
‘The database prepared by the Ministry of Social Affairs on the poor and low-income groups will enable channelling of circumstantial assistance to the actual beneficiaries, and the World Bank will pump funds for the government to further provide aid to families who objected to not having received and have proven that they live in fragility and poverty’.
Verheijen revealed that before this current loan given by the World Bank to support the poor affected by the pandemic, the bank had supported the country by allocating $100 million to help it obtain vaccines and speed up the vaccination campaign and strengthen the health system.
He said, ‘Throughout the year 2020 we have taken numerous actions to reduce the repercussions of the [Covid-19] by using some financial resources that were allocated to several programmes to finance the primary education programme, youth integration, or irrigation in order to channel them towards helping Tunisians cope with the impact of the [Covid-19] and financing emergency purchases of medical equipment and tests.
‘Last year, we provided funds worth $20 million in addition to allocating resources worth $75 million in government budget support to intervene urgently to strengthen the health system and address the [Covid-19]’.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse
Photo source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse
