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Part of World Bank's loan of $ 55 mln to be spent on modernization of schools

Kyrgyz Republic received World Bank financing to scale-up disaster resilience and seismic performance of school buildings. Website of the WB says.

The World Bank’s Board of Directors approved additional financing for the Enhancing Resilience in the Kyrgyz Republic Project in the amount of $55 million from the International Development Association (IDA), on highly concessional terms. Of this amount, $27.5 million is allocated in the form of a grant, which requires no repayment, while the other $27.5 million is a credit with a 0.75% interest rate, with repayments eased over 38 years, and a six-year grace period.

The original Enhancing Resilience in the Kyrgyz Republic Project, in the amount of $20 million, was approved by the World Bank in May 2018 and became effective in February 2019.

«At the request of the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic, on April 1, 2020, the World Bank activated a Contingent Emergency Response Component of the original project and reallocated $9 million to cover immediate needs in the face of the COVID-19 emergency,» says Bolormaa Amgaabazar, World Bank Country Manager for the Kyrgyz Republic. «Through the additional financing in the amount of $55 million, the combined investments will allow the country to achieve greater impact in scaling-up disaster resilience and improving the safety of school buildings.»

The Additional Financing for the Enhancing Resilience in the Kyrgyz Republic Project has two major areas of support:

The first area is the Strengthening Disaster Preparedness and Response Systems component which provisions $5.5 million to be used to modernize the country’s firefighting system. The project will help prepare a firefighting service development program for strategic, managerial and operational levels, and will allow to obtain firefighting vehicles, fleet maintenance vehicles, and other equipment to improve fleet capacity and conditions to reduce emergency response times, as well as firefighting staff’s skills and capacity.

The second area is Improving Safety and Functionality of School Infrastructure, which provisions to allocate an additional $39.1 million to allow for more than 30 school buildings to be retrofitted or replaced in addition to the 10 schools selected in the original project. All of these schools are being selected through a transparent, risk-informed process to maximize safety benefits for children.

The project will be implemented during the period 2020-2025 by the Ministry of Emergency Situations, in close coordination with the Ministry of Education and Science, the State Agency for Architecture, Construction and Housing and Communal Services, and the State Service for Financial Market Regulation and Supervision, in compliance with relevant World Bank procedures and standards.

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