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El Salvador: World Bank Approves $21 Million for Social Protection
The World Bank
El Salvador
October
27, 2005
The World Bank's Board of Directors approved today a $21 million loan to El Salvador to support the country's flagship poverty reduction program, Red Solidaria. The Red Solidaria is an integrated program of targeted investments aimed at strengthening the capacity, productivity, and income of the extreme poor. The program focuses on strengthening the provision and quality of basic social services, improving basic infrastructure, and enhancing the poorest households' capacity to invest in their children's education, health, and nutrition. "A strong social safety net like Red Solidaria is a core element of a country's poverty reduction strategy and a way for all Salvadorans to benefit from the country's broader socio-economic progress," said Jane Armitage, World Bank Country Director for Central America.
"Ongoing efforts to promote economic growth and increase household incomes will be complemented by better investments in children's education, health and nutrition among the poorest families." According to a recent country poverty assessment, the poorest Salvadorans (about 15 percent of the population) have not been able to take advantage of recent socio-economic progress due in large part to their low levels of human capital. Over one-fifth of primary school-aged children from the poorest families either did not attend school or were below the appropriate grade for their age in 2002; less than half of the poor children who do enroll in primary school graduate from 6th grade. Chronic malnutrition levels are 40 percent higher among the poor than the non-poor, while infant mortality rates are almost twice as high among the poor than the non-poor.
As a central element of Red Solidaria, the Government of El Salvador has established, and is implementing, a conditional cash transfer program to encourage extremely poor families to send their 5-15 year old children to pre-school and primary school, fully immunize children younger than 5, and regularly monitor the health and nutrition status of pregnant mothers and infants.
The Social Protection Project will support the government's expansion of the Red Solidaria Program to 80,000 rural families, living in the 100 poorest municipalities, over a five-year period. The project will do so by supporting the following activities: Expanding the existing basic package of maternal and child health services, and the strengthening of community-based interventions to prevent chronic malnutrition in the rural areas of the 100 targeted municipalities. Ensuring that all members of eligible families are incorporated into the national civil registry system and possess the personal identification documents to gain access to basic public services - either in the form of a national identity document or a birth certificate.
Supporting the efforts spearheaded by the Technical Secretariat of the Presidency to ensure the adequate design and implementation of the operational rules and norms of the Red Solidaria Program, effective inter-institutional and inter-sectoral coordination, appropriate supervision and monitoring of the program, and an effective social communication strategy. These initiatives represent the fruits of a productive collaboration between the Government of El Salvador, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, which is also supporting the Red Solidaria program through a related project focused primarily on improving social infrastructure in the poorest municipalities.
"Building the human capital of children under the age of 15 warrants special attention in El Salvador because they represent more than one-third of the country's population, nearly 40 percent of rural residents, and the majority of poor Salvadorans," said Andrew D. Mason, World Bank task manager for the project. "Therefore, investing in children provides high social and economic returns, and promotes sustained poverty reduction." The $21 million, fixed-spread loan carries a total repayment period of 16 years, including a 10-year grace period.
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