Washington: Encouraged by the success of
the poverty alleviation project of Andhra Pradesh, the World
Bank on Wednesday announced financing of another USD 100 million to
the state for improving efficiency and effectiveness of the
programme.
Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project, since
its inception in 2003, has raised incomes of some 10 million
rural women, the World Bank said today.
"This programme has had a remarkable impact on the
lives of the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh," Roberto Zagha,
World Bank Country Director for India, said.
"We have seen incomes increase for close to 90 per
cent of poor rural households. This additional financing will
help improve efficiency and effectiveness of the programme by
adopting new technologies and innovative service delivery
models for achieving full inclusion of the poor households,"
Zagha said.
The Bank said the project objectives will remain the
same as the original project, that is, to enable the rural
poor, particularly the poorest of the poor, improve their
livelihoods and quality of life.
This is the second additional financing for this
project and it will help scale up the impressive achievements
to date, it said.
"This additional financing will help build capacity of
community institutions to enable them to deal more effectively
with the commercial banks, the market institutions, public
sector departments, and developing new partnerships with the
cooperatives and the private sector,"said Parmesh Shah, World
Bank Lead Rural Development Specialist and project team leader.
"We expect this approach to bring even higher returns
on the investments in the institutional platform of the poor
already made. This phase will also work towards achieving
significant decrease in malnutrition and maternal mortality
for the rural poor," he said.
The World Bank said the project has mobilised some 10
million poor women, or 90 per cent of the poor in the project
districts, into nearly 850,000 Self Help Groups. These SHGs
have used seed money to pool resources and make small loans to
help each other pay for education, medical treatment, food,
and other small but important needs.
The SHGs formed federations, leveraging their finances
and influence, and even began to deliver insurance, ambulance,
extension, commercial and government services. These SHGs have
collective savings of USD 805 million and leveraged commercial
bank linkages of USD 4.3 billion. It means that every dollar
invested by the project has leveraged USD 12 from commercial
banks.
Meanwhile, the project`s community managed sustainable
agriculture program has led to aggregate annual cost savings
of USD 69.5 million and the employment generation program has
created 185,748 jobs for the rural youth.
PTI
