World Bank to Extend Loan for Indian Projects

The Indian Ministry of Finance signed two loan agreements with The World Bank on 9 July 2010. The World Bank according to the agreement would extend a loan of $407 million to India for the project on scaling up sustainable and the responsible microfinance as well as for the India statistical strengthening project. $ 300 million would be given to the project on microfinance and the India Statistical Strengthening project would get an assistance of $107 million. The scaling up sustainable and responsible microfinance project aims to increase the spread and access to microfinance services to the financially excluded sections/sectors particularly in under-served areas of India. The India Statistical Strengthening Project on the other hand was formulated by Government of India to support statistical reforms in the country. The four main policies included in the statistical reform are-
1.    Strengthening the institutions of the Indian statistical system
2.    Improving the support provided by the Centre and the statistics and programme implementation ministry to statistical systems of states
3.    Strengthening the capacity of statistical systems in a majority of states and UTs
4.    Improving the coverage, quality, timeliness and credibility of statistics generated across the country