By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, July 10: The World Bank has decided to provide an additional US$ 100 million to improve Nepal's education and health sectors.
The World Bank has approved two separate additional financing of US$50 million each to support the implementation of the government’s flagship School Sector Development Programme and improve efficiency in the public resource management systems of Nepal’s health sector. 
“Strengthening Nepal’s school sector and building resilient health systems are critical for human capital development, particularly for poor and vulnerable populations,” said Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. 
“Through this support to the government of Nepal, we aim to mitigate learning losses and ensure that children return to schools, and improve efficiency of spending and fiscal space for delivering quality and accountable healthcare services.”The additional financing to the school sector development programme will help reduce dropouts and mitigate learning losses by supporting pro-poor targeted scholarships, pro-science scholarships, and catch-up programmes, said a press statement of WB.
It will lay the foundation for the next school sector successor programme in two areas – assessment and data systems, and help create the fiscal space to fill the gap in financing the government’s flagship program.
It will also support the implementation of federalism in Nepal by aligning the program with the federal structure to improve efficiency and achievement of results, said WB.
“Learning losses and drop-outs are higher among children coming from poorer socio-economic backgrounds,” said Karthika Radhakrishnan, World Bank’s Program Task Team Leader. “The additional financing will support catch-up programs to mitigate learning losses, and support children from poorer socio-economic backgrounds through pro-poor targeted scholarships.”  
The additional financing for Nepal health sector management reform programme for Results will support the implementation of Nepal’s health sector strategy in the one-year extension phase and sustain the gains accrued thus far in public resource management reforms of the health sector.
“The additional financing will continue to provide incentives for addressing the bottlenecks to improving public resource management in the health sector, and promote transparency and accountability in the system by linking payments to results,” said Sangeeta Carol Pinto, World Bank’s Programme Task Team Leader.