The loan will support the government’s response to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, focusing on immediate priorities such as disease containment and prevention
The Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) signed a $1.5 billion loan that will support the government’s response to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, focusing on immediate priorities such as disease containment and prevention, as well as social protection for the poor and economically vulnerable sections of the society, especially women and disadvantaged groups.
The signatories to the loan agreement for the ADB’s COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Programme (CARES Programme) were Sameer Kumar Khare, Additional Secretary (Fund Bank and ADB), in the Department of Economic Affairs in Ministry of Finance, and Kenichi Yokoyama, Country Director, ADB, in India.
Earlier, the ADB’s Board of Directors approved the loan to provide budget support to the government to counter and mitigate the adverse health and socio-economic impact of the pandemic.
“We thank ADB’s timely assistance for the government’s immediate response measures to the coronavirus pandemic to implement (i) COVID-19 containment plan to rapidly ramp up test-track-treatment capacity, and (ii) social protection for the poor, vulnerable, women, and disadvantaged groups to protect more than 800 million people over the next three months,” said Khare. “ADB’s financial and technical support will contribute to the sound implementation of the government’s far reaching emergency response programmes launched in March 2020.”
“ADB is glad to support India’s bold measures to contain the COVID- 19 pandemic outbreak while protecting the most vulnerable people affected by movement restrictions, by fast-tracking and delivering the largest ever loan to India. We will continue to engage with the government to strengthen the implementation framework and capacities including monitoring and evaluation systems of its health services and social protection programmes so that the benefits reach to the poor, women, and other disadvantaged people,” said Yokoyama.
Earlier, during the telephone call with Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs and ADB Governor on April 9, 2020, ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa conveyed ADB’s commitment to support India’s emergency needs for the health sector while alleviating the economic impact of the pandemic, as well as short- to medium-term measures to restore the dynamic economic growth of the country by exploring all available financing options.
The CARES Programme is provided as the first support to meet the immediate requirements of the government.
Strengthening of public service delivery will be another important agenda, including the extension of comprehensive primary health services in urban areas, and of secondary and tertiary healthcare systems through PPP modalities.