WASHINGTON, June 12, 2020 – The World Bank’s Board of Directors approved today 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.
This process has been approved by the Kyrgyz Republic’s Ministry of Education and Science, State Agency for Architecture, Construction and Housing and Communal Services, and Ministry of Emergency Situations. The schools with buildings to be replaced will benefit from new buildings that meet modern standards of seismic performance, energy-efficiency and learning environment.
The schools to be retrofitted will improve the seismic performance of their buildings, receive energy efficiency upgrades, improve water supply systems, sanitation, and hygiene, including construction of indoor toilets.
The $9 million that was reallocated for the COVID-19 response in the original project will be replenished from this Additional Financing. Also, the Project will continue to maintain a Contingent Emergency Response Component in order to quickly reallocate project funds to support emergency response and reconstruction, should such a need arise.
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.
The World Bank’s overall mission in the Kyrgyz Republic is to reduce poverty and promote economic growth and shared prosperity. Since 1992, the Bank’s financial assistance to the Kyrgyz Republic has amounted to nearly $1.9 billion in the form of grants and highly concessional credits.
