ADB approves $250mn loan for Social Resilience Programme in Bangladesh

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) today approved a $250 million policy-based loan to further strengthen Bangladesh’s social protection system.

Building on the first Strengthening Social Resilience Programme completed in June 2022, the second programme helps improve the policy, regulatory, and institutional environment for social protection in Bangladesh, ADB said in a press statement recently.

“This new ADB program supports the government’s Action Plan Phase II of the National Social Security Strategy, 2021–2026, to strengthen the protective and preventive capacity of the social protection system in Bangladesh,” said ADB Principal Social Sector Specialist Hiroko Uchimura-Shiroishi. “The program will help improve efficiency in the social protection program management, enhance protection for the most vulnerable, and improve the social protection scope by introducing contributory protection schemes. This will help reduce vulnerability, exclusion, and the risk of people falling into further poverty.”

The programme introduces a verification scheme of beneficiary’s survival for cash-based social protection programmes to reduce leakages. It also consolidates two cash-based protection programs for people with disabilities to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

The program will integrate climate adaptive measures into social protection to strengthen resilience against climate vulnerability, including identification of people who are most at risk of climate change-induced disasters to help determine the appropriate assistance.

ADB’s support strengthens the protection of vulnerable women and transgender people by increasing the number of beneficiaries under the widow allowance programme and expanding the coverage of the livelihood support programme for transgender people.

In addition, Bangladesh Bank is doubling its funding for the Small Enterprise Refinancing Scheme for Women Entrepreneurs to expand access of women small business operators to financial services.

Another aim of the program is to strengthen the governance mechanism of the employment injury scheme pilot, focusing on the ready-made garments sector. It also supports establishing a tripartite committee—comprising workers’ association, employers’ association, and the government—on social protection for workers under the Ministry of Labour and Employment as a key institutional arrangement in further developing the country’s social insurance schemes.

ADB will provide a $1 million grant from its Technical Assistance Special Fund (TASF 7) and another $1 million grant from the ADB-administered Community Resilience Partnership Programme Trust Fund under the Community Resilience Financing Partnership Facility to support program implementation, technical and policy analyses, and capacity building of relevant government agencies.

ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty.

Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members—49 from the region.